


A Filmmaker

by AnotherAoife



Category: Druck, Skam - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, Happy pride month guys I really did this for us, Is mise an scríobhnóir aerach!! Is mise!!, M/M, No beta but I used grammarly because I am what? A coward!, Over use of commas but it's not my fault lol I'm gay, Post canon, Shakequeer, read it please - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-04-07 07:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherAoife/pseuds/AnotherAoife
Summary: Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall dieTake him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fine,That all the world will be in love with night.Aka David makes films, the world loves them.





	1. Did my heart love till now?

****

 

**i. Did my heart love till now?**

 

He made films. After years of dreaming and hoping and praying, he could finally say it out loud without the fear of it being ripped away. He made films. He could introduce himself as a filmmaker. He had gotten into one of the most prestigious film courses in Berlin.

 

David, the filmmaker. David tests the words out gently, rolls them around in his mouth and then breaths them across the pillow.

 

Matteo blinks his lazy eyes open and smiles, sleepy and soft and  _ him.  _

 

“Not yet dude, you have to actually make a film first,” he sighs, eyes glued shut again. David grins at him. A filmmaker, David. 

 

He knows what’s going to happen with the course, he had read the syllabus every year since he was eleven. In first year, he was to make four films, each inspired by a prompt. They had to showcase the techniques he’d be learning in class as well as his own creativity. 

 

The professor was the same one that had been teaching the course for the last ten years, the same professor David had gone to visit once when he was 14, to beg her to let him sit in on the course. Weirdly, the professor didn’t let a random 14 year old skip school to sit in on her college film classes. She did tell him she’d check out his application in three to four years though.

 

And now David had sat in a lecture hall with her and 99 other students every weekday for a month. There had never been a day the same. Most days, David arrived ten minutes early with a coffee and colour coded notes to get a seat in the middle of the front row. Other days he arrived with his hood up, barely enough time to slip into the back 

 

But, every single day, he turns up. And David is so proud of himself for that. He fought for this, for everything he has. He built his life from the ground up. He has to keep fighting if he wants to keep it. 

 

The day they get their first prompt, the entire class was buzzing. Every year the prompts were different, none had ever been used twice from what David could find out. 

 

“Okay guys, this year’s first prompt took me a while to decide on. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it.” The entire class is silent as she turns to write the words on the huge blackboard. Once she moves away the words are easy to read.

 

_ Did you doubt me? _

 

Immediately the class breaks out into a chatter. Everyone wants to have the best idea, to make the best film. There's hundreds of ideas rushing through David’s head, like an impossibly fast slideshow. He scraps most of the ideas before he even realises he had thought them up. Those four words had so much potential.

 

He’s at home eating a dinner Matteo made for him before he decides what idea to run with. 

 

“I know what I’m going to do with it,” he says, staring Matteo down. 

 

Matteo looks up from his plate with chipmunk cheeks. “Okay?” He sounds muffled. 

 

“My film project, I’ve decided what I’m doing with the prompt.”

 

Matteo swallows then grins at David. He has something in his teeth. His eyes have so much love, so much pride, inside them. A year ago it would’ve scared David beyond belief, having another person care that much about him, rely on him, believe in him. He doesn't want to be disappointing. 

 

He wants Matteo to stay proud of him. That's all he wants. 

 

“I’m going to make it about being trans,” David looks up to gauge Matteo’s reaction. He knows he shouldn't, of course he shouldn't, but old habits die hard. 

 

Matteo is still looking at him the same way, proud and loving, nodding excitedly.

 

“That’s such a good idea!” David could see the cogs turning in his head, the excitement and anticipation building. “Oh man, it’ll be so  _ sick  _ David.” 

 

David finds it easier than he ever would’ve thought to smile back.

 

Once he starts to develop his idea, it gets easier. He knows a kid from his old LGBT+ group who wants to be an actor. He calls the kid and he jumps at the chance to be in it. The school provides amazing equipment and David knows plenty of places to film.

 

It's easy. It’s written in days, filmed before the week is done and edited in less than a month. 

 

It's finished four weeks before it's due. 

 

He shows it to Laura before anyone else. 

 

It opens with a frame of feet on pedals, cycling along so fast that the background is a blur of grass and concrete. The only sounds are the white noise the microphones picked up, the kid’s heavy breathing and the pedals squeaking.

 

From there, the story of the trans boy on screen unfolds. It shows his parents, never believing he’d be able to become the cyclist he wants to be. The parent’s faces never get shown on screen, just bodies from the necks down, clad in muted colours and clothes that look straight from the fifties. 

 

He ended up adding effects to some of their words in editing. He made some of their comments sound distorted, like the main character was under water. And he makes sure there were close-ups on the main character’s eyes when the more hateful words were said.

 

This film isn't about the boy’s parents, or his friends, or his other family. For  _ once  _ the film is about the trans kid. He’s the star. 

 

Laura’s favourite scene is the one of the boy repainting the creme walls of his sitting room to Jackson Pollock style paint splatters, then repainting his bike and cycling away with his suitcases.

 

The film ends on a wide shot, the kid facing his sister, drenched in sweat with three gold medals around his neck. He kid looks older, not a kid anymore. 

 

“Did you ever doubt me?” he asks. 

 

“Not for a second,” the on-screen sister replies. 

 

Laura cries when it’s done. David tells her he’s sorry, that she had to leave for him. Laura makes  him swear to never say that again, it wasn’t his fault. He shouldn't have to paint himself beige to match their parents. He wasn’t like them.

 

If they’re creme, he’s ultraviolet.

 

When it’s his turn to premiere his film the entire class goes quiet, enchanted for all 12 minutes. David cements his place as one of the best filmmakers in the class with his first film. 

 

He receives a distinction for it, and a hug from the professor. 

 

She's kind to him. He thinks she understands what it's like, to be young and scared. He doesn't really know, but he thinks that she is kind. To him, that's enough. 

 

He doesn't show it to Matteo until a week after he turned it in. Matteo hugs him all the way through. After that, uploading it to YouTube is easy. David doesn't pay attention to the views, but he has to turn off YouTube notifications because of how many times a day his phone starts buzzing.

 

Jonas tells him his film had hit 100k views two weeks after he decided to post it. David just hopes that there’s a trans kid out there who saw his friend throwing paint at creme walls, and that they thought ‘someday’.

 

The professor starts keeping him back after class, only five minutes at any time. She asks him questions. How is he? Does he have a place to stay? Does he need anything to eat? It's never direct though, it’s always veiled in a way that could come off as casual if she hadn’t seen him at age fourteen, with a haircut he gave himself and a bruise across his cheek that he didn’t.

 

A year ago he would’ve hated her for it. Now he thinks she’s sweet. He tells her not to worry, he’s living with his sister and they have plenty of food. 

 

It’s another month before they get their next prompt.

 

This time it’s simpler, easier even. David heads to Matteo’s the first chance he gets to tell him.

 

“We got the next prompt,” he pants. He ran up the stairs.

 

Matteo is just as excited as last time. He had spent hours listening to David brainstorm what it could be.

 

“It’s  _ ghosts _ .” The smile slips off Matteo’s face. He blinks slowly. 

 

“Oh.” David is lost. He can see Matteo shutting down right in front of him. He steps closer to him and takes both of his hands into his own.

 

“Hey,” he whispers, all of his excitement vanished into thin air. Matteo doesn’t meet his eyes. “ _ Hey.” _

 

Matteo looks up at him, blue eyes glassy.

 

“I don’t like ghosts.”

He spends the next few hours in bed. It makes David’s heart hurt. He doesn't understand what happened, but he stays next to him through it all. He makes Matteo tea, then toast. When both go untouched he brings them back to the kitchen, refusing all of Matteo’s whispered apologies

 

He tries to figure out the trigger but he just can't manage. They must have spoken less than five sentences between them before Matteo spiralled.

 

He has his arms wrapped around Matteo’s waist and his eyes closed when Matteo’s phone starts ringing. Matteo doesn’t make any move to pick it up. Before it rings out, David sees Jonas’s contact. He untangles himself from Matteo and heads to the bathroom to call him back.

 

“Hey dude, something happened with Matteo. I think he’s going into a spiral or something.” David starts. He can hear Jonas getting worried on the other end of the line, the rustling of him sitting up.

 

“What? What happened? What triggered it?” David hears the questions, but he doesn't answer any of them. He doesn’t have any answers.

 

“I don’t know, he’s not talking. Can you come over? It’s just us here.” David hopes he’s doing the right thing.

 

Within twenty minutes Jonas is walking into Matteo’s bedroom, where Matteo is curled up on his bed and David is crouched next to him, whispering.

 

David hears Jonas walk in and gets up to walk over to him. The only thing Matteo does to acknowledge him is look over. 

 

David startts to explain everything that happened, but he doesn't get very far. When he mentions ghosts Jonas stops him.

 

“Oh  _ shit _ ,” he mutters. “Before Matteo was on his meds ghosts were like, a  _ thing. _ ” Jonas explains to him, how Matteo used to sometimes just shut down at the mention of certain things. It wasn’t every time, but it happened. Ghosts were one of the things. Matteo’s mother used to see ghosts, all through his childhood. It was one of the reasons his father left, the ghosts. 

 

Matteo was terrified that one day he might see ghosts too.

 

Matteo is off his meds. David creeps over and crouches down beside Matteo’s face again.

 

“Matteo, Matteo are you taking them? The meds, are you taking them?” David whispers. His voice is shaking. Matteo still doesn't meet his eyes, but he shakes his head slightly. 

 

David is scared. He thought Matteo was doing well, better than ever. He was doing  _ well _ . There was no reason for him to spiral like this. The mediation was  _ working. _

 

_ “Why?”  _ his voice cracks.

 

“I thought I was fixed,” Matteo smiles, bittersweet. 

 

Matteo is back at his biology course a week later.

 

Matteo is back to Matteo a week and a half later.

 

Not a lot of good came out of the episode, but there were silver linings. One of them was inspiration for David's next short film.

 

He makes sure to run the initial idea by Matteo first and, once he has permission, he starts developing his idea.

 

He finishes the film’s final draft at three in the morning on a Saturday. He’s at Matteo’s before 3:20.

 

This film is less hopeful than his first one. It’s darker, more subdued. He applied everything he learned since his first film, symbolism, lighting, colour palettes and all. He used the sets they had in school, bringing his own props and bedsheets and wallpaper. Mia even agreed to play the main character for him.

 

It was about a woman who saw ghosts, how she stayed in bed all day and prayed they wouldn’t find her, how no one believed she was telling the truth. He used handheld shots and soft music through the whole 8 minutes. He got one of the kids majoring in theater to do makeup for him, dark bags under Mia’s skin, rotting flesh on her face in the mirror.

 

Mia absolutely knocked it out of the park. She somehow managed to look just how he wanted. She looked hopeless. 

 

He tried to end it nicely, with the woman taking her pills and the ghosts fading away, but it came off sad. Matteo smiles sadly at him when it’s done.

 

“I didn’t mean to make it so sad,” David mutters. He was so caught up in the joy of finishing it he hadn’t fully considered what it could mean for Matteo.

 

“No, I liked it. It was honest.”

 

David’s class thinks the same. They all think he's really great at what he's doing. 

 

All his life he's told himself ‘Just make it to university, people will be different there’ but he'd never dared to expect it could be as good as it is. 

 

People come up to talk to him before and after classes. They ask him questions, they want to know what had inspired his films, why he had chosen those colours, where he got his actors. He had only made two films but the questions just kept coming. 

 

Everyone wanted to sit next to him, talk to him, hang out after class, get coffee. He was the It Boy of his film class. Everything that had made him different, a target, when he was in secondary school was making him unique here. 

 

David can't get used to it. The year he had spent at his last school had been hell. It had ruined his confidence. It's hard to believe so many people want to get to know him. 

 

He’s building it back though, brick by brick. He’s looking around at where he had buried himself, then clawing his way up and out of the earth. It only gets easier the closer he gets to the surface, because now there were people who were willing to pull him free.

 

He keeps uploading his films to his YouTube channel. He's starting to build a following. Abdi says that people on YouTube love short films, all of David’s do really well. People like his films. 

 

Time moves along. David meets up with his godmother again and shows her both films. She loves them. 

 

David feels himself getting closer to the surface, the air getting cleaner, the dirt leaving his lungs.

 

Matteo stays on his meds and goes to his classes. Amira said he was smart, like really smart. If he had gone to a psychiatrist sooner his life could've been so much easier. 

 

And Matteo,  _ god Matteo _ , he was just like normal. He was funny and charming and stupid and young. He got his head caught in the train doors, he bit David’s tongue by accident, he fell while they were just standing in a lift, just  _ standing _ .

 

David was starting to look at houses, out in Hamburg, with huge gardens and four floors. He imagined how his life could go. His films could become huge and he would buy one of the houses. Laura could move in on one floor, the girls on another, the boys on another, and then on the very top floor Matteo and him could set up a life together.

 

He doesn't have much time to dwell on the future though. School is hard. People are starting to drop out of the course. What had been 100 has dwindled down to 75. 

 

There’s only two prompts left and the second last one was almost  _ made _ for him.

 

_ Supernatural _ .

 

It’s an easy one for him, thank god. David finishes it in a month. He makes a killer film about a lonely gay vampire living in an estate, just what he had always dreamed of. Tumblr goes crazy for it.

 

His followers are starting to become more loyal, wondering when his next films would be coming out. His YouTube channel is pushing  500k subscribers.

 

Matteo’s meds are still an issue. He takes them for a month then feels better, normal. But then he starts to think he doesn't need them. David sticks by him through it all.

 

He opens the curtains when Matteo can't. He puts on soft pop music and dances badly around the bedroom, cleaning things off the floor. 

 

Some days, Matteo heaves his heavy bones off the bed to lean against David so they can sway together. 

 

_ “What we got to lose, what we gotta move, I move mountains,” _ Matteo hums along to the track against David's shoulder. 

 

_ “I’d do anything for you, anything to move, move mountains,” _ David belts back. He spins Matteo. They are enough. 

 

Then, when no one expects it, it happens. The contact pops up mid way through a film class and he has to take it. He stumbles out into the hall, stuttering apologies to the professor.

 

“Hello, is this a Mr. Schreibner speaking?” a woman’s voice comes through the phone, friendly.

 

“Yeah,” David breathes out. He’s leaning against the wall for support.

 

“We’re calling to confirm a top surgery date?” David had told himself he wouldn’t cry, but the second after he hung up the phone, he was in the boy’s bathroom, calling Matteo frantically and breathing heavily into the phone.

 

Matteo is there in ten minutes, knocking on the bathroom door.

 

“David?” He's soft, he's gentle. He's everything David could ever want then some and David has no idea how he got this lucky. 

 

“I have a top surgery date,” David whispers out into the world.

 

Matteo is just as happy as David is. Life goes on. The days to the surgery are counter down on David’s phone, the ok.cool group chat, a calendar in Matteo’s kitchen and a notebook under David's pillow.

 

The day they’re meant to get their last prompt, the professor doesn't show up. Instead, a TA comes in five minutes after the class is due to start. Class is cancelled.

 

On his way to a nearby coffee shop with some of the other students, they all get a Google Classroom notification.

 

_ ‘Prompt is: Something you love’ _

 

David barely even has to think about it before he knows what to do.

 

“Matteo, I want to make a film about you.” David tries to explain what he’s thinking. They had gotten the prompt a week ago and David still isn’t sure if his idea is going to work.

 

“Cool.” Matteo is still focused on the game of Zelda in front of him. His legs are interwined with David’s

 

“No, it'll be weird.” David doesn't know how to make him understand. It would have to be  _ real. _

 

“No, it sounds cool.” Matteo pauses his game. 

 

“Matteo, it would be weird for you. I’d have to be totally honest, lay your heart out bare for all my film class to see.” Matteo looks down, contemplating. His toes nudge against David’s thigh. 

 

“That's okay. I'm trying to get better at showing people my heart.”

 

And David wishes to be the same. He wants to be like Matteo, learning to peel the skin from his chest and bend back his ribcage to showcase his heart bare. When someone would grab for it and tear it out, pumping and obscene, Matteo would plant flowers in its place, where they’d grow to a bigger and brighter heart, tangling and spilling out between his ribs and skin.

 

David can't do that. He’d had his chest pulled open and he has the scars to show it. He wants to be like Matteo, flowering and bright and sunny. Instead, he was sat, stitching himself back together, over and over again. He was wrapping his heart up with metal, only leaving space for three people: Laura, his godmother and Matteo. Everything else gets a place in his hand, or his mind, but only three people are allowed in his heart. 

 

He had never meant it to be three. He thought it would stay at two for his entire life, but Matteo planted himself in the metal and grew inward until his roots were entwined with David’s arteries. 

 

It takes two months to gather enough footage for a twenty minute short film. It was raw and honest and terrifying. It was them, hearts bared and beating on film for the world to see. The day David has to show it to the class he nearly deletes the whole thing.

 

But, he makes it to the class. He wobbles to the front of the room. He plugs in his laptop with shaking fingers. He sets it all up. The lights get turned off. People sit forward in their chairs to see what David has come up with this time.

 

It starts. 

 

Matteo’s face is on the screen, a super close up. It had been filmed on David’s phone. 

 

“Do you think we’re like Romeo and Juliet?” David’s voice sounds airy behind the camera. Matteo’s eyes look away from the camera, up at the ceiling, contemplating.

 

“Not really. I mean, look where they ended up, right? We’re different. We’re Matteo and David.”

 

A voiceover, David’s voice, kicks in.  _ This is Matteo.  _ The screen shows Matteo laughing, nose scrunched up. Then it jump cuts to a concentrated Matteo painting David's nails black, then it cuts to Matteo nodding his head to the music coming out of David’s phone. The clips keep changing with no sound. Matteo dancing, Matteo laughing, Matteo with his fists raised challenging David to a fight.

 

The camera shakes as David sets it up on his tripod to film their wrestling match. They go five rounds and everytime David obliterates Matteo. 

 

One ends with him straddling Matteo’s waist, pinning his wrists above his head. Matteo doesn't look like he's too sad about his loss. 

 

One ends with David on Matteo's back, holding both his hand behind his back, another with him squirming while David holds down his legs. 

 

_ Matteo is turning 19 in October. He says he doesn’t like October, he’s not big on Halloween.  _ The video switches to Matteo in bed, wrapped in the blanket, the curtains are drawn.  _ He’s scared that the ghosts will stay into November.  _

 

The sound of the video comes in and the voiceover cuts out.

 

“Matteo, babe, are you sure you want me to record this?” David’s voice comes from behind the camera again. Matteo in the bed nods a tiny nod and makes a humming noise in the back of his throat. The camera starts shaking then stabilises a few meters away, on the tripod again. David places it so that both he and Matteo are in frame, then walks back over to him.

 

“You want to talk?” he whispers into the silence. Matteo’s head moves left and right slowly. David places himself down next to Matteo and starts drawing.

 

The video turns into a time-lapse with a digital clock. It goes from 1pm to 9pm in seconds, with nearly no movement, then it slows.

 

“I’m hungry,” whispers on-screen Matteo. David grins. 

 

“Good.”

 

_ Matteo has depression. His mother has schizophrenia.  _ The video shows Matteo kissing each of David’s knuckles one by one. It changes to Matteo playing table tennis with the boys, he loses. It changes to Matteo doing an awful attempt at the orange justice dance around David's kitchen. It changes to Matteo after Matteo after Matteo, ten seconds at a time. 

 

_ Matteo has a lot of love in him. He doesn’t like being alone.  _ The video shows Matteo playing go fish with Hans, Linn and Mia. He tilts his head back to look at the camera and grins.

 

The video shows Matteo in the river, all his friends in there too, in the background. David is filming from the bank. Matteo surfaces, hair sticking to his forehead in a way that makes David hopeful for the day he’ll be able to swim in the water with him. Matteo sticks out his tongue and goes back under. He has no idea what it does to David. 

 

_ Matteo’s father left him and his mother when Matteo was 15 to move to Italy. He expected Matteo to look after his mother. Matteo moved out when he was 16. _

 

The video cuts to Matteo making pasta in his pyjamas.

 

“Speak some Italian for the video, babe.” Matteo turns around to look at the camera

 

“David é un fottuto stronzo che mi fa cucinare per lui. Ma, é davvero sexy quindi o consento,” Matteo grins. Subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen.

 

_ ‘David is a fucking asshole who makes me cook for him. But, he’s really sexy so I allow it.’ _

 

“Oh, babe!” David swoons from behind the camera. “What does that mean?”

 

“I said you’re really good at art and sports, and that you make amazing films.” The pasta boils over and Matteo runs over to fix it while David laughs. 

 

_ Matteo is really smart but he nearly failed his abi last year. He couldn’t study. He hadn’t been diagnosed yet so all he did was smoke weed and hope it would turn out okay.  _

 

The video shows Matteo hiking up a hill behind David. He’s obviously not enjoying it. All of it is muted for David’s voiceover. Only one of Matteo’s sentences gets heard.

 

“Why would you do this for  _ fun David,  _ you weirdo.”

 

The next clip is Matteo, deliriously happy at the top of the hill. It’s too windy for any words. Matteo spreads his arms like a mermaid on a ship’s hull and let's his body tip forward, one centimeter at a time. 

 

_ Matteo doesn’t like himself very much, but I think he’s really cool. _

 

The video shows Matteo sliding downs a wall, then trying to taste strawberry lip balm straight from the packet, then trying to sing along to a fast rap song in English. 

 

The video slows down. Matteo is in bed again. 

 

_ Sometimes, especially if he doesn’t take his meds, Matteo has bad days. _

 

“I’m so sorry,” Matteo whispers. David runs his thumb along his face but Matteo pulls away.

 

“Matteo, why? Don’t be.” Matteo sits up. It looks like it takes all his effort. David sits up beside him. Matteo looks down at his hands.

 

“You’re shouldn't have to deal with this for the rest of your life, so I think you should leave,” Matteo looks over at David. The words sound rehearsed. Before David can object he’s ploughing on.

 

“I’m sick, there's something wrong inside me. I’ll have to take drugs for the rest of my life, and go to appointments, and I’ll always have days like this. You deserve better. You deserve a whole person, not me. I’m just a shell of something that never was.” David pulls Matteo’s hand into his. Matteo looks like he wants to pull it away.

 

“That’s bullshit.” David is serious when he says it but Matteo still laughs. “Are you saying you want to leave me because I’m trans?” Matteo’s eyebrows shoot up.

 

“What? No! Of course not, how could you think that?”

 

“Well if you think people could never want you because they’re something wrong that you can’t change, and you need to take medication and go to appointments, then you’d have to think the same for me. Because I do all those things Matteo.” Matteo looks outraged.

 

“No, that’s different. That’s totally different. That’s not fair to you at all.” Matteo looks angry on his boyfriend’s behalf.

 

“How is it any different? Your depression isn’t your fault Matteo.” Matteo doesn’t reply, but it looks like he’s thinking hard. He doesn't say anything, just kisses David sadly and the clip changes.

 

It’s them brushing their teeth together.

 

There’s a clip of them together on a rooftop full of fairy lights, there’s one of them exploring an abandoned building, there's one of them in a fancy restaurant using the chopsticks as moustaches, there’s one of Matteo trying to do a handstand.

 

_ When Matteo was eight he broke his arm. No one noticed for a week. The woman who noticed was his best friend Jonas’s mam.  _

 

Jonas’s face appears on-screen along with the other boys. They all wave at the camera. Matteo comes up behind them with a bucket of ice water.

 

_ Matteo can’t watch the Wizard of Oz without having a panic attack. _

 

The video shows Matteo’s hands squeezing David’s.

 

_ Matteo is allergic to cardamom but he developed immunity to it after eating it for ten years, no matter what reaction he had. I asked his why he ate it if he was allergic. _

 

“I didn’t want anyone to get angry,” says on-screen Matteo as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. The video cuts to a sleepy Matteo just waking up.

 

“I love you,” whispers David.

 

“Gay,” whispers a groggy Matteo, grinning. The screen goes back.

 

_ I love him.  _ The screen goes black.  _ He’s something I love. _

 


	2. Deny thy father and refuse thy name

****

**ii. Deny thy father and refuse thy name**

David realises something while staring at Matteo’s nose, in a post-sex bliss. This boy is ethereal. He’s otherworldly. His skin is pale like porcelain and David is scared to touch in case it shatters underneath his fingers. He reaches out and dangles his fingers down to graze Matteo’s cheek.

 

David doesn’t believe in fate, doesn’t like the idea of it. The thought of someone out there with their fingers poking into his life, his path being laid out in front of him. It can’t be real. David must have some control over where he goes, where he ends up. The thought of fate taking that away from him makes his skin crawl. 

 

Matteo is the opposite, he trusts that the road in front of him will take him the right way, and if it doesn't’ he can still make do with where he ends up. David would rather set the road on fire then buy a boat to sail through the roadless ocean on.

 

Matteo likes it. He told David a story once, about a red string from somewhere, China he thinks.

 

Matteo says there’s an invisible red string around everyone’s ankles. The two people connected by a red thread are destined to find each other, no matter what. The string might stretch or tangle, but it can never break . It terrifies David.

 

Because, what if his string isn’t tied to Matteo’s ankle. What if Matteo’s string leads to someone else, better looking and cooler. Someone who doesn’t cry in the shower, who loves to go swimming with Matteo, who can get a real, stable job and control his thoughts.

 

If there was a string around David’s ankle he’d have his scissors out in a second.

 

David figures it might be their upbringings. Matteo was raised to believe in God, to believe that he was always there, watching out for him. David was raised to believe in the theory of evolution, in science. That people were born as they are, and that was that.

 

David doesn’t believe, but he does know that some things are inevitable. The difference is why. Things in David’s life are inevitable because he makes them, not because some monkeys or ghosts or gods up in the air said so.

 

He knew that he was going to make films Not because some entity had written it in the stars that made up the molecules in his body, but because he’d work for it. He’d keep going until he was lying on the ground panting, and then he’d start to crawl. 

 

David is responsible for everything in his life. He had lost  _ everything _ and then built it all back up. He had made the life around him. When he was out on the streets there was no string leading him to his next stop. There was only David himself, using all the money in his pocket to call Laura and beg her to get the bag from under his bed and leave with him.

 

He would never regret anything more than he regretted making Laura come with him. She could have stayed, they would have let her stay. Instead, David had cried and sobbed and shook until she came to get him.

 

He told her so one night, after the first time he raised enough money from his Patreon for rent. That he was sorry, that he wouldn’t be mad if she wanted to go back to them. She smacked him over the head and told him to never say anything so unbelievably stupid again.

 

“I would never go back there, even if they wanted us both back. Not knowing what they did to us.” David loves her for saying it, but he knows she doesn’t mean it. He sees her grabbing for her phone every time it lights up. 

 

Laura doesn’t like to talk about it, she doesn’t feel guilty for leaving. She says she would do it again a thousand times for David. 

 

David doesn’t know what to do with that information, because he isn’t the same. If he could go back he would never leave again. He wants to go back to Schreibner Sunday Game Night. He wants to feel his mother’s arms around him.  _ I love you to bits, I love you to pieces, I love you to bits, I love you to pieces.  _ He didn’t want to leave. 

 

He wishes it had happened differently. He wishes it was him, angry and strong, gathering his things and running. Instead, it was him crying at 2 am, telling Laura that he couldn’t  _ live  _ like this. He couldn’t survive here. He had to go, he didn’t want to but he had to.

 

He could’ve stayed. They wanted him to stay.

 

David can’t talk about it with Laura, because she didn’t want to stay. The second he said he wouldn’t survive, balling through the payphone, she made her choice. David wanted to be like Laura. Sure and right and caring and strong.

 

David can talk about it though. Matteo understands. Matteo has it worse. He talks, about the weight he feels in his lungs. The suffocating feeling when he thinks about his mother’s smile. How kind she was, how sad she was when his dad left her. 

 

Matteo couldn’t talk about the day he left without having a panic attack. All he feels is guilt.

 

_ I left her David. I saw what it did to her when my dad left and then I did the same. David, I’m killing her.  _

 

Matteo doesn’t talk a lot about his parents. Neither does David.

 

David still texts them every day. Mostly his mother but sometimes his father too. He knows he shouldn't, not if he wanted to  _ heal  _ or whatever bullshit the people at the gender clinic said. 

 

He knows he shouldn't want to go back, but he does. It’s not as simple as he had thought it would be. When he ran out the door, he thought that was it, it was all done. But his mother visited him until he had to tell her to stop. His father asked if he wanted him to bring over his bedsheets. His aunts and uncles came knocking with lasagnas and casseroles and shepherd's pie.

 

He wanted to let them in, God he  _ wanted so badly  _ to let them all in. But he couldn’t. Not when they called him a niece and a daughter and a young woman.

 

It's an awful thing to want to be wanted. 

 

He knows they still love him, that's what makes it hurt the most. 

 

His mother texts back most of the time, begged him to come home. His bed was still there, his chair at the table was waiting. He asks her if she'd like to meet his boyfriend. She blocks his number for a week.

 

David wants his old life back, but not if it costs his new one.

 

His new life is amazing. His top surgery was scheduled for the start of June, his short films had won him a young filmmaker’s award. The awards ceremony he goes to, to receive the award, is packed full of people in the industry. He had introduced himself at least a hundred times over.

 

His professor is there, he sees her before even going in. She had waited at the door for him. He’s there alone, plus ones weren’t allowed and he doesn’t know anyone in the business. She says he had more potential than anyone she had ever taught. Then she points out the tag sticking out from underneath his suit’s sleeve.

 

David doesn’t pull it off, he tucks it in. The suit will be going back after the awards.

 

They show his film there. It’s only fifteen minutes and it’s the only one they show so it holds everyone's attention.

 

It scares David. The film shows him as he is. Lot’s of people in the entertainment industry wouldn’t appreciate a gay, trans man of colour getting an award. But David realises he doesn’t actually care this time.

 

When it’s done, they call his name and the people clap for him.

 

He’s expected to make a speech so he approaches the pedestal and starts talking before he can think too much.

 

“Umm, well thanks to my teacher, of course. She’s the best and has taught me so much. Thanks to my, uh, my friends and my sister Laura. Oh! And Matteo, duh. He was totally honest  _ on film  _ which I think is pretty brave so big shout out to him. Thanks!” 

 

David speed walks away from the stage before they’re even done clapping and collapses into his chair. Then he lets himself smile.

 

One of the executives at the ceremony offers him a one film deal. A real film, with grants and staff and a crew with more than two people. When David looks back on it, years later, he’ll realise it wasn’t a very good deal. They’d only allow him the summer to make the whole film, just three months. And for one of those, he would probably still be trying to recover from top surgery.

 

But, considering he is barely nineteen and has no professional experience, it’s better than anything else. David is still wary. It would be hard and time-consuming and he knows he could get a better deal after school. He decides not to take it.

 

Matteo disagrees, strongly.

 

“What could go wrong? There are no downsides to this David!” Matteo is impassioned, and a little bit high on adrenaline. And dopamine.

 

David doesn’t know how to explain it to him. It wasn’t just the time it would take up, it was all the fear. How is he supposed to make a film? He isn’t even twenty yet. What if he makes his first ever full-length film and it turns out shit. 

 

No one would hire him. Matteo wouldn’t want to be with a failure. His  _ parents  _ would see it.

 

“I’ll get tired,” he mutters into his food. Matteo looks at him like he’s an idiot, albeit an idiot who hung the moon and placed the stars one by one. 

 

“You can do this David, and if not then you can do me instead.” Matteo seems to think that his advice is borderline inspirational. “The worst that could happen is your film is shit, but you gain some experience and your next one is amazing.” 

 

David decides then and there that he might believe, just a tiny bit, in something similar to fate. Because there has to be something out there that decided he can have Matteo. Maybe it’s an apology, for all the bullshit he got before. But he has Matteo either way, and fate can’t have him back.

 

“God, I love you.”

 

David takes the deal.

 

He uses an idea he had come up with when he was living with his parents. It’s a fucked up story. He finds small actors with good english and they get to work.

 

The day before his top surgery they had been filming. He comes home at 10 and collapses into bed. Matteo had waited up for him without question, the sweet, considerate Matteo he is. David doesn’t fall asleep though, and neither does Matteo.

 

Around 3 in the morning, Matteo gets up wordlessly and goes to the kitchen. He comes back with two mugs of chamomile tea.

 

“How are you feeling?” he whispers as he settles next to David, sitting on top of the blanket. The lights are still off but David can just barely make out Matteo’s face.

 

“Good, nervous.” Matteo nods as David speaks.  “Like, I know I want this. I mean, I’ve always wanted this. But I’m scared. And I feel like I’m not allowed to be scared.” Matteo takes his hand, the one that isn’t holding a mug of chamomile tea.

 

“You’re going to be fine.” David nods along this time and he knows it must be true. It’s one of those things. He and Matteo have half of the same heart, the atoms in their bodies are made from the same star and David will be fine. There’s nothing to prove any of it, but David knows.

 

There were so many people in his hospital room when he woke up the nurse had to escort most of them out. Only Laura and Matteo were allowed to stay. Matteo filmed him as he woke up.

 

“David? David, how are you doing?” Laura’s voice is gentle and loving.

 

“I got my tits chopped off dudes,” David is too drugged up to even open his eyes, but he says it with a grin. 

 

He recovers fast, back at work after two weeks. Everything went smoothly. Getting his drains out was terrifying but he made his way through it all.

 

He isn’t allowed to participate in any  _ strenuous activities  _ for two months after the surgery, and they all know what that means. Matteo was nearly as upset as David was when they heard that.

 

His friends and Matteo’s are happy for him, but they don’t miss any opportunities they get to point out his and Matteo’s blue balls. 

 

When he fully recovers, the first thing him and Matteo do is wrestle, they hadn’t realise how much they missed it. Matteo is pinned to the floor on his stomach with David on his back, holding his wrists together in no time. Once Matteo is in that position, what happens next is inevitable.

 

Afterwards, David takes a bath for the first time in ten years. Him and Matteo plan a trip to the beach. David wants to go swimming again soon.

 

Life keeps on going on. His film comes out, it even gets shown in cinemas. It’s dark and twisted and sad but David made it. And people like it, like, really, really like it. It becomes an instant cult classic.

 

They like it so much that he gets offered another deal, a better deal. Complete creative control over four films over 24 months. Two years of work. 

 

It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but David makes it. He leaves school. The professor cries when he tells her he won’t be coming back. David tells her she can have the first ticket to any of his premiers for the rest of their lives.

 

The time goes fast. But there are slow moments too.

 

David keeps running, every morning he can. He goes for 6am runs on Saturday mornings because he likes the way it feels. He comes back to Matteo’s apartment afterwards. Mia lets him into Matteo’s room where Matteo is just barely waking up.

 

“Matteo? How often do you exercise?” Matteo just groans from under his covers in response.

 

“Three times,” he moans. David jumps onto the bed, sweaty and tired.

 

“Three times a week? Or a month? Matteo?” he goes to poke at Matteo’s stomach.

 

“I’ve answered the question,” Matteo grumbles, swatting away David’s hands.

 

David is constantly scared that something will take Matteo away from him. It’s always just too good to be true when they’re together. He wants them to run. It’s something deep and animal inside him, telling him they have to escape. But Matteo says they can’t run from fate, and he thinks fate will let them stay together.

 

Sometimes, on the bad days, David disagrees. He thinks Matteo will feel the red string pulling him away to someone else, someone smarter and funnier and braver, and David will be left, with his own string trailing on the floor, attached to nothing but his ankle. He wants to tell Matteo, he wants so much to tell him, but he can’.

 

If Matteo wants to leave, he can’t hold him back. He doesn’t want him to stay because of guilt.

 

David tries his best to keep it in, lasts for about two weeks, but he can’t keep anything from Matteo. He wants to protect Matteo, with every cell in his body he wants to keep Matteo safe, but he also wants to let himself be seen and loved and comforted.

 

It cultivates at a party, they’re alone in the garden, trying to climb up a tree when David just lets it all pour out of him. The doubt, the guilt, the paralysing fear. Matteo says he feels the same way about David.

 

It gets better after that. He pushes the thoughts saying it won’t last down and covers them over with Matteo.

 

“God, remember in, like, 2016 when there were clowns running around. I’d love to go back to just that month, it was crazy.” David is just thinking out loud, his legs tangled up with Matteo’s on David and Laura’s couch.

 

“You can just look in the mirror.” Matteo doesn’t even have to think before he speaks. David is floored. This fucking boy.

 

“Okay, put up your fists Mr. Florenzi, let’s settle this.” David doesn’t mention that the last time they talked about October of 2016 Matteo forgot how to breathe. 

 

David joins twitter then shortly after he joins Tumblr again. He gains lots of followers very quickly. People appreciate what he does, making stories about LGBT people. He gains a cult following, people willing to defend him to the death. It’s weird and he isn’t quite sure if he likes it yet.

 

“Jonas said I have to say sorry for calling you smelly after your run.” Matteo kicks at David’s shins from where he’s lying on David’s bed. David thinks he looks like he’s been sent straight from Heaven.

 

“Okay, go ahead.”

 

“I just did.” David looks at Matteo in disbelief.

 

“No you didn’t, that wasn’t an apology.” 

 

“Yes it was, I said sorry. There, I just said it again. Now I’ve got one in the bank, so I can do whatever I want to you.” Matteo grins up at him, his nose and eyes crinkling.

 

_ This fucking boy. _

 

David loves him, with every single thing he has, he loves him. Matteo had stormed into his life, a tornado of seaside air and flower petals, and he had made everything brighter. David had been quiet and waiting, silently wanting. He was a bird with no nest. He was just trying to make it through, pay the rent, finish school and then fuck off to Detroit. 

 

Then Matteo had come in and bit by bit, given David the things he needed to build his nest from, and for. David’s world was meant to be three people but he can feel it expanding. Every time he punches Carlos or twirls Amira or tries to teach Kiki how to dance or laughs at Jonas, he feels it get bigger, brighter.

 

David’s films get released, four in two years. They all have one thing in common. The characters die at the end. They never get happy endings. David doesn’t know why. Maybe he just needs to get it out of his system, maybe he can’t give it to them until he was sure it’s possible, until he’s sure it can’t be taken away.

 

He’s waiting to make sure he was allowed to keep his own happy ending.

 

There’s one about a kid who wants to grow up to be a vampire. David hopes his parents get to see it, but he doesn’t ask if they go.

 

One of the lines becomes a meme. 

 

“What? He had a gun, it was self-defence.”

 

“He did not have a gun.”

 

“Okay, fine, so it was murder. Who cares?”

 

Someone on Twitter asks what inspired it. David is more than happy to share that it was something Matteo  _ actually  _ said while he was playing a video game. 

 

David experiences  _ the _ best moment of his career when his second film comes out. Someone makes him a Wikipedia page.

 

It’s fairly bare, not a lot of details. It has his name, age and nationality. In the filmography section are all his full-length films along with his four short films. It links to his Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and the Patreon he forgot he even had.

 

Everyone's favourite part though, is the ‘Personal Life’ section.

 

“David Schreibner is transgender and in a homosexual relationship with his long term boyfriend.”

 

Matteo didn’t even get a name drop. 

 

When his friends realise he has his own Wikipedia page, they go batshit. They all make accounts specifically to vandalise it. 

 

“David is widely considered to be one of the most unnaturally competitive people in Germany. He once sprained his incredibly handsome friend’s ankle in a friendly game of soccer.”

 

“David is generally thought to be a prince, a god among men if you will, but what the public doesn’t realise is that he is actually a gremlin.”

 

“David is violently homophobic. im his boyfriend and he kicked me in the back of the knee once and it made my knee buckle and i dropped a jug of milk it was traumatic and i consider it a hate crime.”

 

They do throw him a party though. A Wikipedia party.

 

It’s overdramatic and colourful and loud and hilarious. David understands what Hans means when he talks about found family, he understands with all his heart.

 

David knows his life was going too well. He feels it coming before it happens. He looks down at his phone one morning after waking up next to Matteo and sees a text from his father.

 

_ Sweetheart, please come over for dinner on Tuesday. Your mother and I wish to speak with you. _

 

And David  _ feels  _ it bubbling up his throat, tearing his oesophagus. The years of walking on eggshells and whispering at night and hands shaking when the news came on.

 

He can feel it clawing its way up from somewhere deep inside him to remind him of the words his father used when he found out. The look in his eye. The cold that spread from him to the entire house. He remembers how it felt, when his father called him a daughter and a sister and a niece. It leaves something disgusting on his tongue. 

 

How could he, this man, after two years of radio silence? How could he just do that? David wishes he could be like Laura again. Stone cold.

 

Instead, he’s waking Matteo up with his tears. Over a  _ text message. _

 

It hurts him, to know his father still has this power over him.

 

But Matteo is there, and Matteo has his arms around David and David wants to unzip his skin and let Matteo look inside.

 

He wants to take himself apart and let Matteo seep into every crevice, plant his flowers inside all of David’s veins. He wants to let Matteo take his bones and his skin and every cell he has.

 

And it scares him, it terrifies him. But this time he doesn’t run. He stays in the bed and he hugs Matteo back tighter and begs him not to let go. He wants Matteo to see the flowers he plants bloom. He wants to show him that he doesn’t leave paths of destruction like he thinks he does.

 

But more than that, more than his need to show Matteo his heart and show Matteo that he leaves beauty behind him everywhere he goes. More than any of that, he wants to be held.

 

And Matteo understands that. So Matteo holds him. 

 

Matteo offers to go to the dinner with him, after he decides he wants to go. But this is something David wants to do alone. Laura will be there anyway. He’ll get through it.

 

They leave their apartment together, David and Laura. They hold hands on the bus. Before knocking, Laura puts her hands on his shoulders.

 

“We don’t have to do this.” David just nods. Laura brings her fist down on the door harder than she needs to.

 

The dinner starts okay. His mother is taken aback when she opens the door and sees David, taller and broader and with shorter hair. 

 

David realises that they haven’t met face to face in three years. A lot had changed.

 

“Mama.” David knows the next words out of her mouth will decide whether or not they are still family.

 

“David,” she seems to have to choke it out. Hearing her say his name shouldn’t make David as happy as it does.

 

They go inside. Everything is the same, of course it is. You don’t redecorate your entire house because both of your children leave it at two in the morning one night. 

 

David’s father is sitting on the couch, facing away from them. David wants to cry, god he wants to cry. His father turns around. David does not cry.

 

“Hey, kid.” It’s not David, but it’s so much better than last time.

 

And David wants it to be enough,  _ god he wants, b _ ut he knows he can’t. If he’s coming back here, it’s all or nothing. Not to be half accepted, half embraced, half encouraged. He needs to know if it’s worth it.

 

“Please say my  _ name _ , Dad.” David doesn’t like the way his voice sounds when he speaks so he makes up for it with his face. He is stone cold, and he can feel Laura, stone cold behind him.

 

“Don’t do this sweetheart,” his mother’s voice comes weak from beside him. He’s not like her. He’s like Laura. Stone cold. They’d never drive their kids away. They wouldn’t be weak.

 

“My  _ name _ ,” David sounds as fierce as he feels. It’s been  _ years _ of hopes and prayers and half-truths. He needs to know if this could still be his family or not.

 

His father stays silent. It’s all the answer he needs. He walks out the door behind Laura. She holds him on the bus back as he cries. Matteo holds them that night in his bed.

 

“I want to move in with you,” David whispers. His skin is too tight and he can feel where his tears had dried on his cheeks.

 

“I want to move in with you too,” Matteo whispers back.

 

They don’t fall asleep. They stay up and play candy crush and talk about how shitty fathers are. It doesn’t make anything better, but it also does.

 

David wants to take these moments, the laughs between the tears, the half-asleep hugs at four in the morning. He wants to wrap them up in amber and put them on his shelves to keep for forever.

 

Instead, he keeps moving. And he lets himself grow his roots down into the earth below him and build his nest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didnt add notes last time for some reason but normally i do  
> please i beg please please please leave comments. even if theyre mean. tell me about your dog i love hearing about peoples dogs and the druck fandom is quiet atm because theres nothing airing so ill need extra comments from all of you please and thank youcomments keep me going. anyways, its summer holidays which means for once i actually have spare time (crazy i know) so ill be working on this for a bit
> 
> hit me up on my social please its always so cool and if you think leaving asks or messages is cringe then ill beat u up because they make me FEEL nice thank you very munch
> 
> Tumblr: https://aoifeanamadan.tumblr.com/ say hello please. aoife an amadán means aoife the idiot. im aoife. im the idiot. its in irish because im irish, i like irish and i speak irish please do not bully me over it  
> Instagram: aoife.i


	3. These violent delights have violent ends

**iii. These violent delights have violent ends**

After the success of David’s first five films, his following only gets bigger. Twitter adores him and his fans are loyal beyond belief. Before David even feels it happening, his films are mainstream. The buzz surrounding him is one of the factors in David getting another deal, his third in 22 years.

 

It’s like the last, complete creative control, funding, his own crew. David makes sure he’s still allowed to be involved in every aspect, from casting to lighting to editing. He even gets involved in sound design.

 

He’s done this for all his films, and they all radiate David. He’s put pieces of himself in everything he’s made and it shows in the final product.

 

But there’s one thing the people can still predict, even in his new films. It’s been the one common theme in all of his films. 

 

There are no happy endings. It becomes a meme within his fanbase. None of his full-length films have seen all the characters survive to the end credits. 

 

David starts to get recognised on the street more. It happens once when him, Matteo, Hanna and Jonas are out for lunch. A super fan sees him and runs into the restaurant. She’s shoving her phone in his face so fast he can barely comprehend what’s on the screen.

 

Eventually, it comes into focus. It’s his own face.

 

The girl has to be escorted out by the waiters and for some reason, his friends think it's fucking  _ hilarious.  _ Jonas is sure to text the whole debacle into the ok.cool group chat before even leaving the restaurant.

 

More and more people start getting into his films. Before his sixth film even comes out he’s being invited to events with Wes Anderson and Baz Luhrmann.

 

It’s unreal. Just when David thinks he’s hit his peak, it gets better.

 

David fucking Schreibner is invited to the Met Gala, at age 22. 

 

He can barely breathe when he gets the email. He checks twenty times to make sure it’s not fake before he calls Matteo.

 

“David?” Matteo answers on the last ring, he always does.

 

“Want to go for a night out, Matteo?”

 

David records his friends' reactions when he tells them. They’re all funny, wide-eyed and disbelieving, but Amira’s is by far the best. She just straight up denies it for a full five minutes until, eventually, David gets through to her, then she freaks out.

 

“Oh my  _ god,  _ David it’s only four days away. What am I going to  _ wear? _ ” She’s already rooting through her wardrobe. 

 

“I haven’t even invited you yet, Amy.” Amira smiles at the nickname.

 

“Oh David, as if you could survive over there without me.”

 

He uploads a compilation of all their reactions to his YouTube and gets #2 on the worldwide trending page, just after Ed Sheeran’s new song.

 

They get the car ferry over, all of them together. They thought they might be one seat short but Matteo was happy to just sit on David’s lap. Thankfully, Hanna’s minibus has more space in the back where she could fold up a chair to let Amira sit.

 

The ride over is excruciating. While they’re boarding the boat, authorities ask to search Amira’s luggage. The food onboard is terrible and they forgot to book a room, so they camp in the bus. 

 

It’s not all bad though. They have each other and Cards Against Humanity. David thinks it might be his favourite trip yet.

 

When they’re entering America, Sam, David, Amira  _ and  _ Abdi all get pulled for ‘random’ security checks. Everyone has heard of that kind of thing happening here but they didn’t think that they would be  _ that  _ obvious. 

 

Carlos, Sam and Abdi are all done in under five minutes. Amira and David are not. David had warned them this might happen.

 

Amira and David both get taken away to different rooms to be questioned. Jonas has to take Matteo to the bathroom because  _ Jonas, I can’t- I can’t breathe Jonas. Oh my god, oh fuck. Fuck Jonas, Jonas I can’t breathe. What if they don’t let him through. I can’t- Jonas. _

 

In the room, David has to get them to Google him and look at images, to prove he’s not faking his identity. Somehow, he thinks he would have been pulled out even if he didn’t have a famous name.

 

Twenty minutes after they were taken, David and Amira walk back to their friends at baggage claim. No one mentions Amira’s tear-stained cheeks or Matteo’s short breaths and shaking hands or David’s steely eyes. They just get back on the bus and get driving.

 

The hotel is crazy fancy. Them not having to pay for it makes it feel fifty times fancier. They have two huge, connecting rooms. The person at the check-in desk knew David’s films, so he gave them extra biscuits.

 

“Oh, the perks of worldwide fame,” remarks Abdi, longing on the couch and popping what must be his 20th biscuit into his mouth.

 

They show up to the Met in Hanna’s 2009 Toyota Minibus, the entire gang piling out into the guest entrance. Before they go on the carpet, people offer them makeup. The girls all get touch ups, David and Matteo have some fun and the boys go crazy. 

 

They walk out together, Jonas in a bold red lip, Carlos contoured to the gods and Abdi with winged liner that could cut a bitch. David doesn’t wear anything like that. He thinks, maybe someday he might, but today is not that day.

 

The year’s theme is supernatural and they go all out. 

 

The girls are collectively dressed as a gang of Frankenstein’s monsters. They got their dresses at Thrift Stores in the city so they would be allowed to keep them. Abdi and Carlos are zombies, they couldn’t think of anything else. Jonas grossly misunderstood the culture of a Met ball and comes as a ghostbuster. 

 

Matteo and David come as the only thing that makes sense for them, vampires. They have expensive suits from a designer whose name David can’t pronounce and vampire-esque make up done by someone who apparently knows Beyoncé.

 

David walks onto the carpet first, with his whole gang behind him. His heart is hammering inside his chest. There are so many cameras and the flashes are hurting his eyes.

 

A short ginger woman calls his name so he walks over. She looks extremely shocked.

 

“Hi,” David smiles gingerly. She pounces at her chance.

 

“Would you be willing to do a short interview for GQ Men?” she pulls out her microphone and the camera looms over him. David nods.

 

“So, who are you wearing tonight?” David was good at English, his Abi results could prove it, but he does  _ not  _ understand that question. In a panic, he smiles and nods then stutters out an answer.

 

“I am wearing a suit.” His accent is strong and his eyes showcase his confusion but the woman laughs kindly.

 

“How did you travel to America?” She throws him a softball, easy to understand.

 

“Me and my friends, we came together on a ferry two nights ago. It was lots of stress.” The woman nods along and gives David confidence.

 

“Do you have any new films coming out?”

 

“Yes! I just signed a deal for a new film, should come out this year or the next,” David grins.

 

“Should we expect the usual ending?” the woman laughs. David decides he likes her.

 

“Well now, I can’t give it away, can I?” he raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. Later, a gif of this becomes a classic reaction gif. It gets used so much in the ok.cool group chat, David considers leaving.

 

“And, last question, is there anyone romantic we should know about?”

 

“Well,” before David can answer he sees Jonas approaching someone from behind. The someone is Laverne Cox,  _ the  _ Laverne Cox. David can’t let Jonas fuck this up for him. “Oh my god, my friend is about to talk to Ms. Cox. I  _ cannot  _ let that happen, I’m so sorry, I have to go.” He scurries away without even thinking about how suspicious it looks for him to run away the second they ask about his significant other.

 

David blunders his way through a conversation with  _ the  _ Laverne Cox where he mentions how cool he thinks she is at least four times and forgets at least three simple English words. She says she thinks he’s really cool too. She loves his films. Matteo has to stop him from fainting.

 

He stutters his way through another couple of interviews, never directly answering questions about his relationship. It’s not even on purpose, it just happens like that.

 

The actual dinner is great, so many people tell him his films are amazing. David talks to Troye Sivan, so he can finally die happy.

 

The entire night is a blur of Instagram stories, starstruckenness and laughter. 

 

The next morning when he wakes up next to Matteo, in a hotel this time  _ thank god,  _ he’s trending on Twitter.

 

His name is right there, next to number one.

 

People loved him, the way he fanboyed to the interviewers about how Lady Gaga was going to be at his table. The pictures were hilarious. He managed to look awkward in every single one of them. The people thought it was cute.

 

A video of him taking out his headphones to show a cameraman his favourite song had gotten its own twitter moment.

 

Videos were up on YouTube within an hour of the event. People went through his old twitter videos and even his friends' profiles for more footage.

 

_ David Schreibner being a disaster on the red carpet _

 

_ David Schreibner asks Shia LaBeouf about his dog at the Met Gala _

 

_ David Schreibner getting excited over tiny things for three and a half minutes _

 

_ David Schreibner being relatable for twelve minutes  _

 

_ David Schreibner avoiding questions about his relationship for six minutes straight _

 

All of them had millions of views. He gained hundreds of thousands of followers every hour.

 

Matteo rolls over in his sleep, flopping his arm over David’s chest and knocking his phone onto the floor.

 

He’s drooling.

 

“Morning, sexy,” grins David. Matteo manages to muster the effort to raise his middle finger as a reply. David tries to bite it.

 

They go down for breakfast with everyone else before re-boarding the hell that is the ferry. Before long, David and Matteo are back in their apartment. David is back at work the next day.

 

The film is finished shooting within weeks. 

 

German tabloids start to realise how big David is online. They run headlines on him. Is he trans? Is he in a relationship? Is he gay? Is he Jewish?

 

They beg him for interviews, all middle-aged men and women begging him to tell them about his body. He says no to all of them.

 

Then, one day as he’s checking out after his weekly food shop, the cashier stops him.

 

Her name is Elsie. This is her third job. She takes HRT medication. She tells him that his films help her, so much.

 

Her other jobs are as a nighttime cleaner and a reporter for a smaller tabloid.

 

He offers her an interview once her shift is done.

 

It’s informal, in a café. She brings a notepad and a camera on a tripod. They set up in a quiet corner with a cappuccino for her and a hot chocolate for him. She tells him he doesn’t have to answer any questions he doesn’t want to, then hits record.

 

Her questions are smart and funny. She’s obviously seen his films.

 

He reveals more than he had planned to, but he doesn’t regret it. He hinted at his relationship with his parents, said “no comment” when she asked about any romance just to be funny and he tells the public that he was trans. 

 

He had never meant to hide it. He thought it was obvious when every one of his films included a trans character, but apparently not.

 

He thought that if he gave an interview, the interest in him would go down. Instead, it goes up. He’s still only a filmmaker, so people rarely recognise him on the street, but it happens. It was nearly 100% positive, people saying they love his films and that he inspires them, whatever that even means. 

 

He doesn’t want to give any more interviews, so instead, he comes up with a system.

 

Whenever he feels like it, he’ll go live on Instagram or YouTube and answer the questions he wants to. 

 

It was a good idea in theory, but on his seventh ever live, Matteo barges in asking him how he could  _ ever  _ think that it was okay to leave his shoes tied when he takes them off.

 

“Oh Matteo, baby, you are  _ so  _ fucking dumb,” grins David up at him, lovestruck. He’s still off-screen, but the people know he’s here. The chat goes crazy. Matteo peeks his head into the frame. You can see the switch of realisation flip in his head.

 

“Oops.” He smiles guiltily. David just laughs. Matteo runs to the couch and sits against David, leaning into his chest.

 

“Introduce yourself,” prompts David. 

 

“Hey guys, I’m Matteo, I’m 21 and I’m studying to be a software developer.” Matteo’s eyes slip closed. It’s been one of those days, David can tell. “Basically, that means I’m the smart one in the relationship.”

 

David’s eyebrows shoot up.

 

“Oh yeah? Want me to tell the hundreds thousand people here about what happened Wednesday night?” 

 

Matteo huffs a breath out from his nose. He’s nearly falling asleep in David’s arms.

 

“Hey guys, my name is Jared-” he whispers down into Matteo’s ear, teasing him for the way he introduced himself. The chat goes insane trying to guess what he’s saying.

 

“And I never learned how to fucking read,” whispers Matteo back, smiling. The insomnia is hitting him harder than usual.

 

David shuts down the live, tugs them both into bed and curls up on Matteo’s back until they’re both asleep.

 

A few of the people in the chat recognise Matteo from the short film David had made in his first year of college. They go crazy that they’re still together, and so does the rest of social media. His Tumblr tag is number one trending for three days straight.

 

His mother texts him about the live. She saw Matteo. She says he seems lovely.

 

He asks her to stop texting him. He expects silence from then on. Instead, his phone rings. He declines. It rings again. And again. And again. Texts start to flood in.

 

**_Mama:_ ** _ David please pick up the phone, I’d like to talk to you _

**_7 missed call from:_ ** _ Mama _

**_Mama:_ ** _ david please  _

**_Mama:_ ** _ david i am your mother and you will speak to me _

**_Mama:_ ** _ david _

 

David leaves her on read. It’s not fair, for her to walk in and out of his life over and over again, like it’s nothing. Like he’s  _ nothing.  _

 

It’s later that evening, after the nap. He’s lying in bed, Matteo’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth. He didn’t tell Matteo about the texts. Matteo can tell something’s wrong the second he walks back into the bedroom.

 

“Babe? What’s wrong? Dude?” Matteo’s voice is so concerned, David smiles despite himself. 

 

“I can’t be ‘babe’ and ‘dude’ in the same sentence.” David tries to sound serious but Matteo just smiles back at him, loving and warm and  _ home.  _

 

“Yeah, you can. You can do anything David. You’re like, _amazing,_ ” Matteo looks at him with that look in his fucking eyes and David can’t keep it in. Suddenly there are tears rolling down his cheeks and he has no idea where they’re coming from but they just keep coming.

 

“Fuck off.” It’s a teary laugh but Matteo understands. He settles behind David with his arms open. David lets himself be held.

 

Matteo is being Matteo. He’s playing with David’s hair and breathing on his neck and he’s a beach on a calm morning and the woods when it rains and sitting outside a party to breathe and he is  _ everything. _

 

This boy, made of the same flesh, bone and blood as everyone else, has chosen him. Matteo, with this _ sunlight  _ inside him, young and sweet and Matteo. And he has chosen David.

 

He’s french toast on winter mornings and sunshine grins in the evening. He is everything and then some.

 

David knows he’s in too deep, he has been for years now. If Matteo said jump, he’d spend every last penny to his name on trampolines. He would do anything. 

 

Matteo is his sun and his moon and his stars.

 

Every atom in his body screams it. A constant hum of  _ MatteoMatteoMatteo _ . David had never felt it before they met. 

 

He would’ve been scared if it was anyone else. But this is Matteo, and Matteo’s cells hum the melody to his cells. A never-ending stream of  _ DavidDavidDavid.  _

 

He hears it, when they cook, when they laugh, when they sleep, when he looks into Matteo’s eyes.

 

The old David would have run, but this David can’t. There’s nowhere on Earth he could go. On any corner of the globe he would still hear it, still feel it.   _ DavidMatteoDavidMatteoDavidMatteo. _

 

David can’t imagine running, because he doesn’t want to. There’s no better sound, no better life, no better person. He wants to stay, forever wrapped up in Matteo, their cells singing a chorus.

 

David is crying.

 

“David?” Matteo doesn’t push, but he’s worried. And David is worried too. Because it’s been years and he’s still scared every time he feels this, the deep yearning inside him. The animal need for Matteo to stay. Because Matteo could run, if he wanted to. If he woke up one day and decided he didn’t want David, he didn’t like the song their cells sang, he could just go.

 

It was starting to seem that no one wanted David.

 

“You’re all I have,” he sniffles. Matteo just hums.

 

“No.” David is shocked for a moment before Matteo continues. “I mean, that’s sweet and poetic and everything but it’s just not true. Christ, you’re so much more than you see David.”

 

David twists around to face Matteo. He can see it in his eyes, all that Matteo thinks him to be. It’s written as clear as day. Matteo’s eyes are winter blue and begging him to understand.

 

“David, you’re  _ everything.  _ I think that. So do your friends from your old school, so does Laura, so do the boys and the girls and the hundreds of thousands of people who find their  _ lifeblood  _ in your films and your art. David, you’re so  _ much  _ and you don’t even know it.”

 

David loves this fucking boy so much. It still scares him, but he won’t be running. And if, by some cruel twist of fate, Matteo runs instead, he’ll be fine.

 

It would hurt like a knife being twisted through his heart and he might just go deaf, but he would survive it.

 

David isn’t one half of David and Matteo. He’s David. And he won’t give any of himself up. He is whole, Matteo is whole. And together, they’re love.

 

The next time his mother rings, he answers. They set up a dinner. Matteo offers to come. David says no again. This is something his family has to do alone.

 

Matteo comes along anyway, but he goes to a coffee shop instead of David’s house. Laura holds his hand walking to the door, just like the last time.

 

David feels like he’s being taken back to this time two years ago, when his father refused his name and his mother didn’t help him.

 

He’s not stone cold anymore. He’s kind and sweet and loving and creative and so much more. He’s not weak, he’s never been weak, but he can show his weakness.

 

David is the person he’s always wanted to be. This time, David knocks on the door.

 

His mother is there in seconds. She doesn't hesitate this time when she says hello. 

 

“David.”

 

She's smiling, and it's at him. And David can feel something changing.

 

They walk inside, to the kitchen he told them in. His dad is there, just sitting at the table. 

 

“David.” 

 

And suddenly David can barely breathe. Because his father is sitting before him, balding and tired and honest, with his calloused hands and dark skin. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, with a sunflower cloth covering it, in this kitchen, in this house, in this city. David’s father is sat before him, and he’s calling him David.

 

It doesn’t change what’s happened. It doesn’t stitch David up from the inside out, but David doesn’t think he’d like it to.

 

There’s a part of him, way deep down, rotting and black, that wants to say no. Say it’s too late, they had their chance when he was sitting in front of them, saying he couldn’t live like this anymore, when he was 16.

 

The same part that told him to run, told him to say he didn’t love Matteo, told him to give up on films.

 

He tells it to shut up. Because this is enough. It’s enough for him.

 

It’s enough. David is crying, but so is Laura. So is his mother, and so is his father.

 

David is in  _ his  _ kitchen with this family and he’s  _ finally  _ able to see his happy ending. He had forgotten how much he had to leave behind, how much he didn’t let himself miss.

 

His mother’s bratwurst is just as bad as he remembers it. His father still says she peels the potatoes wrong. It’s awkward, quiet. The call him the wrong name and use the wrong pronouns a few times, but they say they’re sorry and try again.

 

His room is the same as he left it, yellow walls where he wanted a deep navy. His Skylanders action figures are still in a box under his bed with his first binder. His name, David, is still carved into the skirting board behind his wardrobe. This room is bursting with David, it’s seeping out under the door, through the cracks in the walls, into the rest of the house. 

 

David is proud. He could’ve come back, of course he could have, but he would have had to come back as a lie. He would’ve had to hide binders in boxes and buy hair scrunchies with Laura, he would’ve had to be someone else.

 

Instead, he stayed away. He stayed himself. He didn’t let himself be chipped away at by time, he stood tall and let the clock try to erode him to dust.

 

Then he walked away.

 

But now, he could come back. He could come back as David, with two new scars, a filmography list on Wikipedia, a loving boyfriend and a life of his own. David could be David. 

 

People might come and go, or they might push him away and then beg him to come back, but no matter what, David would stay David.

 

And he’s d always have his happy ending, because the happiness was inside him, running through his arteries and seeping out his mouth and skin and eyes.

 

David was so much, he was more than enough.

 

He goes back down for dessert. His father asks him about his boyfriend and actually cares about the answers. David says he’d like them to meet soon. They finish desert and do the first real Schreibner Family Game Night in six years. David loses first, just like he always has. When he mentions this, his mother has to leave the room in tears.

 

He follows her.

 

“We missed you  _ so much,  _ David.” And then David is crying too.

 

He’s not the tallest, average height at best, but he’s taller than his mother. When they hug, she rests her head on his shoulder.

 

“You’re so much bigger,” she sniffles.

 

“I know. It’s because I had to grow up mama. I had to grow up alone, and so did Laura.” David needs her to know, needs her to know why he denied so many of her calls, why he wouldn’t come back until he was sure they’d call him David, until they’d call him their son.

 

David can still hardly bare to think about what he did to Laura on his best days, so when he’s sitting in his hall on his staircase next to his crying mother, he cries too.

 

“So did Laura mama. She was only 19. She had to spend all her money to keep me clothed and warm and fed, because you didn’t want to believe that I’d wear a suit instead of a wedding dress. You did that to us, to her. She didn’t deserve that.”

 

David’s mother looks up at him, teary-eyed and brimming with sorrow. He imagines her, for the past six years, at the hospital nursing sick kids. How many trans kids did she help? How many kids just like David did she treat before she realised how wrong she was.

 

“She didn’t even get to finish university.” David couldn't stop his voice from cracking.

 

“I’m so sorry David. We both are.” If David was to open up her soul right now, he thinks he would find it brimming with sorrow and overflowing with all the love she’ had to save up over the last six years. David believes her.

 

They leave after dinner is done and agree to meet again next week.

 

They finish up reshoots and David finishes the last few hours of editing in his flat while Matteo is at work. He had decided to change the ending.

David’s next film comes out. It premieres at Sundance and David doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so proud. It’s sad all the way through, but just as the audience thinks it’s going to end as another tragedy, it steers of its course.

 

The characters communicate and forgive and reconcile. Even the bad guy ends up happy

 

He’s seen the film so many times while making it, he decides to watch the audience instead. They cry.

 

At the end, he comes out for a Q&A. The first question is the only real important one.

 

“Why didn’t you do another sad ending?”   
  


“Because not everything ends sadly.”

 

There are more questions though. They ask what his inspiration is (my life, my experiences and mostly my boyfriend). They ask about the themes of his films (love as a cause for violence, I think). He gives his old professor a shout out for believing in him then, he leaves the stage and goes back to Matteo and their friends.

 

David is allowed to give himself happy endings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i woke up yesterday to my inbox with a 26 next to it and booy oh fuckin boy did that make my heart happy. i read every comment like eight times thank you so so so so much my brains is squeezing out the ol' serotonin. 
> 
> please continue telling me about your pets. 
> 
> also shoutout to the dog that eats cheese and the new foster kitten, a fighter.


	4. Then I defy you, stars

 

_**Then I defy you, stars** _

  
David is 24 and happiness is finally something he thinks might stick around. It’s laced into everything he does, his work, his jokes, his speech. David has spent enough time grasping onto joy to try and make it stick around for a lifetime. For now, he’s just letting it chill.

 

He takes a break from films. When he announces it on Twitter it sends shockwaves through his world, he somehow makes the front page of _The Sun._ It’s scary and new and dangerous, but David knows it’s the right choice for him.

 

He’d been pumping films out for years, trying to make sure he had enough money to stay afloat, trying to make a name for himself. He wants to try new things. He wants to make art, or animate, or do things he never would have even thought of. Films were starting to smother him. He wants to be free to make whatever he wants, not tied up in contracts or production schedules.

 

When David had been making films, he had always handled the soundtrack. It was one of his favourite parts. He used to make mood boards and then link them to a Spotify playlist where anyone could suggest music that matched the vibes.

 

He enjoyed making soundtracks so much he figures there’s only one way to go. He starts directing music videos. He had always known it was something he’d love to do, but he had just skipped past that part of his directorial career.

 

It’s different and strange, entirely non-David, and he loves it.

 

At first, everyone wants him to work with them. But he’s picky about the artists he’ll direct for. He gets the studios to foot the bill when he works with small artists.

 

The videos are weird and wacky and so much fun. He does one about an old woman who sells bow ties outside her local florists, he does one about a girl who makes herself a career in calligraphy, he even animates a few. All the small bands love it _and_ it gets them exposure.

 

It’s fun, but sometimes David gets emails from agents of managers of huge singers. They’re nothing like the other bands. They’re immediately about the money and the _mutual benefit_ and other things that barely even come up normally.

 

Anytime he lets himself be convinced to work with huge artists, he uses it for good. He makes videos about trans rights and homelessness and mental illness and refugees and everything else he thinks needs it. He tries his best to convince artists to donate all the proceeds to charity, and when their labels won’t allow it, he names and shames the executives who make that decision on Twitter,

 

David does a lot for charity. He makes too much money doing something he loves, so he tries to give back. He donates and donates and donates, his time along with his money. He uses his platform to spread messages of love, compassion and empathy.

 

He does charity drawing streams, charity gaming streams, charity Christmas streams. He becomes a UN ambassador, an Amnesty International representative, anything he can do with his platform, he does it.

 

The more content he releases, the more willing his fans are to die for him. It’s scary. Millions of people want to know everything about him, and he doesn’t want them to. He’s not some larger than life figure who has an amazing and inspirational life tale, he’s just David.

 

He laughs at his own jokes, he only likes a certain brand of mushroom, he listens to sad music when he’s in a good mood so he can appreciate it better. He hasn’t swum oceans or saved lives, he’d broken his ankle once but that was the extent of his martyrdom. He isn’t curing cancer or receiving refugees at the front lines, he’s watering his plants and thinking about tv show concepts.

 

He isn’t what they think he is. He’s not a tortured artist. He’s just trying to live.

 

He stays up with Matteo when he can’t sleep, he cuffs his jeans because he’s not straight, he asks telemarketers how their days are going and buys things he doesn’t need so they can get the commission.

 

His Wikipedia page bulks up. What used to be a snub, with jokes from his friends and barely enough information to warrant a page, turns into a real page. His least favourite part is the first part, _Upbringing and Personal Life._

 

_“David Schreibner was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. He was born on the 22nd of July, 2001. He grew up in the suburbs. At age 15, he came out to his parents. They rejected him and at age 16 he ran away from home with his sister.”_

 

_“He attended Berlin’s School of Filmography for one year before being offered a one film deal. He dropped out of school to take this deal.”_

 

_“He has been in a relationship with Matteo Florenzi (@Matteohno) for over six years.”_

 

It feels too personal to him. He doesn’t like anyone on earth being able to just find all of this in one go.  He doesn’t want strangers to know about his parents without the full story. He doesn’t want his first eighteen years reduced to a paragraph.

 

The more people learn about him, the more he feels the need to clarify. He goes through all his old emails just to find one that he knows he must have seen.

 

It’s there, four weeks deep and unopened. It’s from WIRED, an offer to do an Auto-Complete interview. He replies to set up a date.

 

The next day, he’s in their Berlin studio with Matteo standing awkwardly around the crew behind the camera and him sitting on an uncomfortable stool with a big bit of cardboard.

 

The first question is _Is David Schreibner gay?_ As an answer, David calls Matteo into the frame to kiss grossly for the cameras. And from there it only gets funnier.

 

Matteo says his personal favourites were when David responded to _“Is David Schreibner Jewish?”_ in Hebrew, _“Is David Schreibner a transgender?”_ by saying “Ask the surgeon who did my top surgery.” and _“What does David Schreiber do?”_ with a long and dramatic existential rant about capitalism.

 

He trends on Tumblr yet again.

 

Before Matteo graduates from college, a year after everyone else because of his gap year, Jonas and David set up a game. They both go to collect him. Once they’re there, one of them will try running to Matteo’s old apartment and the other will try to sneak onto the bus.

 

Whoever arrives first wins. It’s both the best and worst thing they’ve ever done.

 

The first round, Matteo and Jonas get the bus. It’s nice once they’re on, relaxing. They talk about courses, Hannah and David, their families. They talk about everything, and it’s easy. It’s Jonas and Matteo. It’s natural.

 

What’s not natural, is how fast and long David can run. Videos pop up on Twitter from people who recognised him flying through the streets, and they’re fantastic. He just zooms past everything, you can hear the people recording muttering _holy shit is that David Schreibner?_ or _why the fuck is that guy running so fast?_

 

David wins, panting and sweaty and barely able to stand, but he wins. He wins the next week too, when it’s his turn on the bus. Jonas says it’s rigged, but how David manages to rig public transportation he doesn’t know.

 

Life is good, but it’s not all peach perfect.

 

David is trying to make up for lost time with his parents. They run into a lot of potholes. It's kind of like how it used to be, but now they apologise when they should. 

 

His dad asks him if he wants to go hunting. David would have thought it was sweet, that his dad wanted to bond while doing ‘manly’ things. He _would_ have if he hadn’t spent the first 16 years of his life telling his dad how horrific hunting is.

 

David realises then, the obstacles they would face.

 

“I’m the same person as before Dad. Now I’m just fully me.”

 

From there on it gets easier.

 

David might not be the son his father had exactly expected, but he was the son he wanted. And they did have things to bond over. He’s good at camping, running, surviving. He’s tough. His father says he gets it from him once. David is quick to tell him that Laura is ten times tougher. Laura, stone cold, strong, sweetheart Laura. David thinks she's the toughest of them all.

 

They’re not perfect, but they’re trying. And David is tough too.

 

It's better, coming home to Matteo after family dinners smiling. Seeing Matteo so happy for him makes him braver. It takes him time to decide, but eventually, he works up the nerve to ask the question at a dinner.

 

“Should I bring Matteo next week?”

 

The reaction is instant. His father is choking on his water and his mother is nodding so hard he thinks she might get whiplash. His dad manages to choke out a yes through his watering eyes.

 

Matteo is more than happy to tag along the next week. On the way to David’s old house from the bus stop, he jokes about David’s parents being on thin ice. David senses more seriousness behind it than he expected.

 

“Matteo? Whatever happens, let me handle it.”

 

“Something might happen?” Matteo tries to joke but David needs to make it clear. This is his life. It’s sweet, in some ways, that Matteo is protective but he needs control here. They had hurt him, he got to decide what could happen with them now. He stops walking and turns to look into Matteo’s eyes.

 

“I can handle them. If I forgive them, you have to try to.” He doesn’t want to call it pleading, because he’d never have to plead with Matteo. Matteo would leap off a cliff if it was what David truly wanted. This is something more. It’s him trying to condense years of suffering into two sentences. He was angry enough for the both of them, he doesn’t need Matteo to be hostile for him.

 

Matteo understands, because he is Matteo. He is kind and funny and a moron, but he’s David’s moron. The dinner goes off without a hitch. Matteo is sweet, charming even. David's parents love him.

 

After the dinner, David feels seventeen again. They walk with Laura back to the bus but before they board Matteo pulls him down the street.

 

Before David can think about how tired he’ll be the next morning, or how irresponsible this is, they’re running through Berlin’s dark streets. Matteo is doused in the streetlamp's orange light and David thinks he looks like a Greek god.

 

They do what they used to. They explore. They find old buildings and before they think about the danger they’re looking through them. They take stupid pictures and look at the unique architecture and pretend to be the 19th-century idiots living in the city they grew up in, the city they fell in love in.

 

David loves him so much it nearly hurts.

 

They play shitty music from David’s phone and dance around on smashed glass. David thinks the same thing again, but stronger. _Soulmates._ He says he doesn’t believe, but there’s no other explanation for the look in Matteo’s eyes and the sound of his heart pumping his blood and the way his hands still tingle whenever they land on any part of Matteo.

 

If this is what it feels like to be high, David could be a drug addict in another life.

 

Matteo’s skin is soft and he’s beaming at David. David didn’t know it was possible to love this hard before they met.

 

They dance and they run through the pools of light on the concrete for hours. They both take sick days the next day and stay in bed.

 

David never wants his life to change. But then he imagines the future. Him and Matteo, old and grey, dancing around the same way but slower and he can’t help but long for it.

In between the moments that remind David why he loves art so much _(it gives him ways to try and show how the moments feel)_ there is routine.

 

He goes to the gym with Jonas. It’s tradition. They had dragged themselves there, worked for an hour and a half and then got milkshakes on the way home four times a week since the first year of college.

 

They learnt a lot about each other there. Jonas was allergic to sumac. The sound of forks scraping against plates made David cry. Jonas tried to eat a balloon when he was eleven on a dare and ended up in hospital. David knew how to do a flip.

 

Jonas nearly checked himself into rehab. David had to lock every blade in his apartment into a big box that only Laura could open when he was sixteen. Jonas felt like he couldn’t breathe for the first ten weeks without Hannah. David bruised his ribs more times than he can count.

 

It’s good for them, the both of them.

 

They had tried to drag Matteo along a couple of times but it had just ended up with Matteo ogling David for the hour and a half. He had tried to use one of the machines and somehow managed to use it so wrong that the owner had to come over out of indignation, and a small bit of respect.

 

It had been fun while it lasted. Matteo calling David _honeysuckle_ and _sweetcheeks_ and _flowerbunch_ in front of all the huge muscly men giving them _looks._ Matteo had just floated about, he couldn’t care less what those huge men thought of his _loveypoo._

 

Eventually, David had reached his point of saturation when it came to embarrassment. He was flaming red and stuttering by the time they left.

 

Matteo is just as sweet as he was when they were 18. It’s unpredictable. They’ll be folding clothes and Matteo will stop mid-sentence to mention how David is the best thing to ever happen to him.

 

David never knows how to react. He’s always too shocked to do anything but kiss him, but Matteo doesn’t seem disappointed.

 

They’re sitting on the couch, or at least David is. Matteo's half-lying down, half-falling to the floor just to keep his head in David’s lap. Carlos, Abdi and Jonas are on the floor playing a high stakes game of Snap. Matteo had been quiet just long enough to make David think he’s sleeping before he just starts talking.

 

“I love you so much. My entire world, like, _revolves_ around you man. You’re basically the sun. You're so cool and hot and kind and funny. And you’re so successful! You’re world famous dude and I am _so_ lucky to be around you, don’t even get me started on getting to be in _love_ with you. Damn.” Matteo doesn’t even open his eyes to stay it.

 

And David doesn’t know what to do. Because there is this _boy_ with his head in David’s lap with every synonym for love just flowing out of him. And there are three other boys just sitting there beaming up at him like seven-year-olds. And Matteo is here, waxing poetry from thin air while David can’t make himself think anything except the word love a thousand times over.

 

Matteo doesn’t even need to think before he opens his mouth and these words of adoration just flow out. But David isn’t like that. He doesn’t know how to just, show it. How do you explain to someone that if you are their sun, they are a supernova. Gorgeous and bright and exploding.

 

If Supernova Matteo exploded, Sun David would happily by engulfed.

 

But he can’t just _say_ that.

 

Before he even has a chance to try and express how much he worships Matteo, Jonas is slipping in with an “Oh Matteo, I feel the same way about you!” and David has a chance to breathe.

 

That night, when they’re just laying together, David tries to explain.

 

“I just, I _love_ you so much Matteo I can’t even explain it.” It’s nothing, compared to Matteo’s daily declarations of tender worship, but Matteo still grins up at him like he’s a personal deity.

Matteo starts speaking Italian more. It makes David want to learn, to understand what he’s actually saying. But David is happy he doesn’t speak Italian. He likes to get lost in the sounds and the pictures they bring to his head. He doesn’t want it ruined by verb tense and conjugation and all the other bullshit he knows he’d have to learn.

 

He likes just listening to Matteo, when they’re lying next to each other and David convinces him to just talk. It’s like listening to a song, the ups and downs and lilts of Matteo’s voice. David could make albums out of it.

 

They go to the beach. For the first time in twenty years, David puts his feet in the stand and takes off his shirt.

 

They make sandcastles and eat Mia’s sandwiches and dance to tinny music from Amira’s speaker. There’s a water fight. It’s _unclear_ who started it (It was David and if he didn’t know he’d get drenched for admitting that, he’d be very proud).

 

It’s a bit pointless, since they’re in the ocean, but it’s perfect. They make alliances, the alliances get broken, David leaps on Abdi’s back to pull him under. Kiki fights dirty and gets a water gun from the picnic basket.

 

They have a dance competition. David _turns it out._ He’s voguing and beyoncé-ing his way around on the sand, then Matteo says he’s getting too cocky. He pushes his way off the sand and into David’s performing space.

 

It goes from David giving them a once in a lifetime concert experience, to Matteo jumping around him like a rabbit, doing air guitar and lip syncing in a language he can’t even speak.

 

David thinks he sees Jonas filming, but he doesn’t want to stop. He’s hopping too. It’s him and Matteo, in the middle of a circle of their friends, twirling and leaping and jumping and keeling over in stitches while screaming “Oh my god!” with _emotion._

 

David turns his back to Matteo and Matteo understands. He turns his back too. Just as Ida Marie reaches her climactic “Oh My God!” they whip around to grab onto each other. Matteo laughs so hard he drags them both down to the sand.

 

David wants to reach back in time and pull his twelve-year-old self here. He wants to show him that people weren’t lying. It really does get better.

 

One day, he’ll be eating squashed homemade sandwiches with people he loves. One day, he’ll have a person he calls home and friends he loves and the career he’d dreamed of. One day, all the hard work pays off. He’ll just have to survive the right now.

 

David wants to hug him and never send him back to the life he has.

 

But he can’t do that. All he can do is tell today’s twelve-year-olds that _it gets better._ And they’ll want to be here to see it.

 

He changes his twitter bio.

 

_“Respecting trans kids is suicide prevention”_

 

On the drive back, David turns up the radio and sticks his sandy feet out the window. The air is cold and fast and it whips the sand away. The sun is on it’s way to setting. The lights are orange and bouncing off the mirrors. David’s hair is wet and salty. His sunglasses are slipping off his face.

 

In the back of the minivan he hears everyone else, rowdy and grinning, but here in the front seat, it’s just him and Matteo. Matteo reaches over to run his fingers through David’s tangled hair, and he feels something. Something good.

 

Matteo makes him dizzy with it, like he just got off a rollercoaster. His legs are jelly and his stomach is doing laps around his other organs. All the bad parts of his brain, of himself, are left up in the sky.

 

When they get back to the apartment, David gives them matching tattoos. He uses a needle with thread, sellotaped to a pencil. He dips it in Indian ink and just pricks over and over. Matteo pretends it doesn’t hurt.

 

By the end of it all, they have too tiny cartoon versions of themselves holding little cartoon hearts up. Having a tattoo is less monumental than Matteo expected. It’s just a quiet reminder of the love in his life, on the inside of his wrist.

 

They have a party, on the roof of Amira’s apartment, to celebrate Matteo’s graduation from college. There’s fairy lights and beanbags and pizza. Amira brings up a few of her best-baked goods.

 

They come up with a game. David, the person with the best hand-eye coordination, is blindfolded. Then, people throw things at him for him to catch.

 

He’s so good at it it was suspicious. No matter how hard, how gentle, how high, how low they threw things, David would catch them. He made it look easy. People start to get frustrated.

 

Matteo steps up to the throwing spot.

 

“Don’t forget to say something before you-” David is cut off by an unidentified flying object whizzing through the air and right into his face. The smack is painfully loud.

 

Matteo immediately runs forward, stuttering apologies and grabbing David’s face in between his hands to check for injuries.

 

“Guys! This game is dangerous! David got hurt!”

 

“You’re the only one who hurt him!” Jonas looks happier than he should.

 

They connect every speaker to Jonas’s phone and then they dance.

 

David is so happy he can’t think. He’s grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. He’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe. Matteo spins him and he doesn’t overthink it. He just spins. Then he spins Matteo back. He moves without thinking. Everyone does their best to sing along to the words they don’t understand.

 

When the song gets soft, David holds Matteo’s face in his hands. They sway, and David could collapse with the love he feels. He’s mad for this man, enchanted by him.  He clings closer to him. Then the song gets fast again, and he’s so happy he could cry.

 

Later, when it’s darker, David puts his head in Matteo’s lap. Matteo runs his fingertips over David's face so gently he could be a butterfly. There’s something inside David, screaming _ILoveYouILoveYouILoveYou._ David thinks it’s just his brain.

 

He thinks that, even if fate doesn’t exist, they have to be soulmates. Their hearts beat the same, they’re made of the same star. David thinks that if something took Matteo now, he wouldn’t survive. But then he doesn’t like that thought so he lets himself go back to the _ILoveYou_ ’s.

 

He wants to stay here, with the pads of Matteo’s fingers running over his eyelids for the rest of his life. Or, if that can’t happen, he wants to have more moments like this. More rooftop nights in the cold, more eating the food Amira’s mother taught her to make. He wants more, more, more, more.

 

What he has now is enough, but David wants to let himself want more than enough. And that starts with Matteo. Matteo has always been more than enough.

 

David still worries sometimes though. When he was younger, he’d fight all the time. At least twice a week there was war in his house over tiny things. Laura taking his clothes, his mother throwing away his things without asking, his father pretending his opinion was fact. He was always fighting, tooth and nail.

 

He and Matteo never fight. It makes him scared.

 

David remembers the first fight he and Laura had after they left.

 

David had forgotten to scrape the food on his plate into the bin before leaving it next to the sink. Laura had blown up at him. Everything had built up, over the three months after they left. Every second she missed her parents, every time she imagined how it could’ve gone differently. Every moment of sorrow or longing or annoyance had formed a big, black entity inside her, and she realised it onto David.

 

He understood what was happening, let the words roll off his back like water. He knew she didn’t mean any of it. It would’ve been nothing if she didn’t say her last sentence.

 

“You are _the worst_ sister in the world!”  She didn’t mean it. She didn’t want David to feel it the way he did. Her eyes went wide and she was rushing out apologies before David had even processed it.

 

When he did, he whispered. "Fuck you Laura." Then he walked away. He walked straight out the door and slammed it behind him. He had turned his street’s corner before Laura even got to the bottom of the stairs. The only choice she had was to wait inside for him.

 

He came back, hours later during the night. She was sorry, so so sorry. He forgave her before he even walked inside. They lay next to each other in Laura’s bed, Laura’s cheeks stained with mascara and David’s eyes red. Laura kept muttering apologies and reassurances.

 

Later, when they were both so quiet they could’ve been asleep, David whispered into the dark.

 

“You can’t _do_ that.” His voice cracked even though he had spent twenty minutes preparing his words. “Your love can’t be something I have to _earn.”_ Laura was already opening her mouth to apologise again but David stopped her.

 

“It’s all or nothing, Laura. You have to decide.”

 

Laura does decide, she decides in a split second,  and she sticks with her decision for the rest of her life. It was never even a choice to her.

 

Once they’re both calmed down she says what she needed to.

 

“I’m sorry David, you know I am. But you can’t do that either. You can’t just run the second something happens. I know you had every right to get away from me, but you can’t do that. Please. Just go to your room, or a park, or anywhere but _tell me where_ ”

 

David said he would next time, but it took him another few years to stick to his word.

 

But, once he got his life together, things got good.

 

Jonas, Abdi, Carlos and David plan a surprise party for Matteo. It’s a month before his birthday, just so he has no chance at predicting it. They go all out. David makes Matteo run errands the whole morning while they set up the decorations. They get a cake saying 024 because that’s the kind of thing Matteo finds hilarious. 

 

When he comes back, complaining about the length of the lines while reaching to turn on the lights, he gets the shock of his life. The second he flicks the switch, all of his friends leap out from doorways and sofas and even some presses.

 

The party is one of the best. The cake takes some explaining. _(024 because you’re 24 Matteo. Reverse the numbers Matteo.)_ It goes on all night. They play a shitty game of truth or dare in which Abdi gives David a lapdance, Jonas gets to tell them all the most MoronTM thing Matteo ever did and Sam teaches them how to dance like the characters in Fortnite.

 

It’s 4 in the morning by the time everyone is gone. It’s just David and Matteo, lying top and tail in their bed and talking. And it makes David feel the same thing he always does when he and Matteo get moments like this.

 

It’s the same feeling, over and over and over again, but different every time. There are different voices and different places and different acoustics and visuals and thoughts but it’s the one red thread running through it all.

 

It’s like love, but somehow more. And it’s laced through everything David does around him. When they’re walking and Matteo trips over his own feet, when David catches Matteo staring at his lips instead of the film on the screen in front of them, when Matteo sneezes, when David realises how far gone he is, it’s in everything.

 

An intern on one of his projects asked him a question once, one that made David think.

 

_“Do you ever wish you’d gotten the chance to be with somebody else?”_

 

David doesn’t even need to try and imagine a life with anyone else to know that he wouldn’t trade a single second he had with Matteo for even a chance with anyone else.

 

Sitting there, sweaty and gross, he feels something trying to worm its way out of David’s heart chamber. Something permanent; something longing. To David, it feels like a red string.

 

David wants to kiss him now, tell him every thought that’s ever crashed around inside his head. God, David’s ready right then and there to marry him. He’s burning, he’s beside himself with the need. He worships Matteo.

 

“Marry me,” David says. It’s not even a question. They’re both in boxers. It’s not the proposal he had dreamed of. Matteo sits up, dead straight.

 

“What?” Something beastly and feral inside him says to give up, that Matteo could never want him like that. He ignores it.

 

“Marry me.” David’s voice is quieter this time, but somehow he means it more.

 

“But, it’s too early.” Matteo is just staring at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

 

“No, it’s not.” David realises how much he actually wants this, has wanted it since the first time they kissed. He wants to spend the rest of his life with Matteo.

 

“It is, the average age of marriage in Germany is 33.4” David gives him a look. Matteo looks back, doe-eyed and innocent. Then he cracks, falling back into the headboard and groaning.

 

“I looked it up. I wanted to ask you but I thought it would be too early.” and suddenly David is grasping onto Matteo’s hands, beaming, as the sun creeps it’s way up.

 

“Say _yes_ , Matteo.” Matteo looks shocked.

 

“Of course fucking yes you _fool,”_ Matteo sounds like he might cry. David is well past the point of _might._ He can feel the salt on his skin. Then Matteo and him are kissing and when they pull away Matteo has tears on his cheeks too.

 

Matteo swears that they’re David’s tears, but the water falling from his eyes make him sound less convincing.

 

Fate might be here, and it might not. Honestly, David couldn’t give a fuck. Because nothing could make him stop loving Matteo now. He’s his own fate.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COMMENT  
> i dont reply to a lot of them because i dont know how to express how much they mean to me without sounding generic xoxo but the ones that gave me what i wanted and talked about the pets were blessed and i thank you
> 
> sorry lol its been eight days  
> ive had this mostly ready for the last few days but i just couldnt make my self write a few of the scenes. ive been tired. and like fairlt anxious. and i was at a communion where no lie i was cute af 
> 
> anyways lewis capaldi SLAPs and i love him  
> if anyonee has advice for irish college during the summer please drop it in the comments im so scarred because im going alone what if everyone there just hates me :(
> 
>  
> 
> also i gave myself and my friend a stick and poke a few weeks ago on my upper thigh nd oh the stress of trying to hide it while wearing my shorts was wowza


	5. It is enough I may but call him mine

**v. It is enough I may but call him mine**

 

David likes to run. It’s one of the things that’s been constant his whole life. David is real, David likes films and David likes to run.

 

He likes the way it feels, his feet slapping the ground, the music blasting through his veins, into his muscles. His body moves the way it was made to, fast and hard and strong. 

 

Strong, just like Laura. Just like Matteo. Just like David.

 

He can go for kilometres without even thinking. It’s just a foot in front of another, breath after breath. He runs until he’s gasping, pulling in ragged breaths. He sprints until he’s choking on his lungs, until he thinks he might be sick. Then he runs faster. It makes him feel alive. 

 

You can’t say you’re dead if you can feel your heart pumping.

 

When David was younger, he wanted to be a shark so he could never stop moving. He wanted to go and go and go, to never have to make a home for himself. He thought there had to be something, buried in his back, a timebomb. He couldn’t stop or it would blow up.

 

When he met Matteo, he stopped wanting that. With Matteo, he feels safe and warm and soft. He wants to make a home with him. He could stay wrapped up in Matteo for years and never feel the weight on his chest telling him he has to run.

 

He runs anyway, because sometimes David just likes things. Not everything he does always has to be as poetic as it once was. David used to run from, now he just runs. It helps his joints.

 

David doesn’t have a ring. He never thought he’d get married, used to say it was bullshit. The only reason to get married was for taxes. Then Matteo looked at him like that and all his thoughts flew out the window. If he couldn’t marry Matteo he might die. 

 

He hadn’t planned on proposing that night, or at all for the next fifteen years. Once Matteo says yes, they find a paper towel in the kitchen and tear it into strips. He braids together two flimsy rings and slips one onto Matteo’s finger.

 

Once the rings are on, David phones up his godmother. She picks up, even though it’s 3 in the morning on a weekday. David knew she would, she’s his godmother. He can’t stop himself from telling her.

 

After that, they don’t tell anyone they’re engaged. At first, it’s not on purpose. They want to keep it to themselves for a little while, something for only the two of them. Once they both wake up the morning after, if you can count 2pm as the morning, they decide they should tell people one by one. 

 

The first time they tell someone, it’s not planned. It’s less than an hour after they wake up. David goes out to the kitchen of  _ he and Matteo’s  _ flat. When he turns the corner to walk to the sink, Hans is there, sitting on his counter and talking to Linn.

 

“Hi?” David is too tired, exhausted from all the crying and laughing and breathing. He doesn’t have the energy for questions. But he smiles.

 

“David! My love! Are those teary eyes? What has  _ happened?”  _ Hans is up and running to the bedroom to check on Matteo before David can even open his mouth to answer. Hans takes his dramatics with him. Linn is more chilled. 

 

“Come on, I want to be there to see this.” She walks after Hans and David walks after her, muttering about how happy tears are a thing too.

 

In the bedroom, Hans is shaking Matteo by the shoulders. 

 

“You can tell me  _ anything _ , my butterfly!” David realises how much he loves Hans. He’s fun, the life of the party, but beneath all that there’s an even better person. Someone who is kind and caring and willing to give away all of himself to the people he loves. He’s the kind of father David would have killed for. He looks after anyone and everyone. Hans is the definition of unconditional.

 

Matteo looks over at David and makes a face. David nods back and Matteo grins.

 

“Hans, you might want to sit down. You too, Linn.”

 

When they tell them, Hans screams so loud David is sure they’ll be evicted and Linn smiles wider than David’s ever seen before. They’re both already asking about venues and flowers and suits, all things David hasn’t spared a single thought for yet.

 

But overall, they’re happy for David and Matteo. Over the moon. Exactly what David had expected of them.

 

They tell Jonas next. Matteo didn’t even consider anyone else. They’re sitting in his and Hanna’s flat, drinking watery tea and being blinded by the sun coming through the cracks in the blinds.

 

“Sorry, we have no coffee. I forgot to go shopping this week.” Jonas comes bustling back into the kitchen with a basket of washing to fold.

 

“Jonas, stop being yourself.” Matteo grins. It’s nice, just watching them together. They’re like brothers. They can have entire conversations without saying anything. 

 

“Dude! Fuck you,” laughs Jonas. David is happy that he’s Matteo’s best friend, it gave him the opportunity to meet him. Jonas is like Hans. He’s kind. That’s all David really wants in a friend. David senses that Matteo isn’t going to be able to keep a secret from him for much longer. He pulls his hand out from under Matteo’s to grab for his phone and hit record.

 

“Okay, you _  idiot.  _ Listen,” Matteo starts. Jonas puts down the basket to give Matteo his full attention. He can’t help laughing at how serious Matteo seems. “We’re engaged.”

 

The smile falls off Jonas’s face. David doesn’t worry. His eyes are bulging out of his head and his jaw has hit the floor. It opens and closes a few times but no sound comes out.

 

“Oh my God! Holy fuck, holy shit, oh-oh my God! Matteo! What the fuck? I think I might faint!” Jonas collapses into a chair and starts laughing in disbelief. David can hear him muttering ‘oh my god’ to himself over and over again.

 

David knows it can only get better from here.

 

“One more thing,” Matteo is grinning still. Jonas just nods at him, dumbfounded. “You’re going to be my best man” That's when the waterworks start. David wants to say it’s funny, but it’s not. It’s pure emotion. It’s all the years Jonas worried about Matteo coming together.

 

He says yes.

 

It’s a tiny bit funny.

 

After that, they tell Laura. She cries for an hour straight. She makes them dinner, shit as usual, then starts brainstorming engagement gifts. Before she can get too far, David figures he should tell her the other bit of news.

 

“I want you to be my best woman,” he blurts out, when she’s mid-sentence. She cries so hard she can barely breathe, in a good way - the best way. She says it’s the best day of her life. 

 

They tell Abdi, completely by accident. The plan was to tell Abdi and Carlos at the same time, but Matteo just  _ couldn’t _  do things according to plan apparently. Abdi’s talking about some girl and Matteo’s trying his best to give advice, despite having been with exactly one person, and that person being a man.

 

“What would you know about relationship issues, dude?” Abdi has a point, but it pushes Matteo’s buttons wrong.

 

“Well, I  _ am  _ engaged.” He means it as a humble brag but one  _ Matteo what the actual fuck  _ look from David makes him reconsider.

 

“You’re what?!”

 

After Abdi, they tell Carlos. It’s only fair. The way they do it though, is not fair.

 

It starts with Matteo sending him a text to the group chat.

 

**Matteo:** _ come over quickly please _

 

The other two boys are already at the flat, putting water in Matteo’s eyes and burning herbs that smell like weed inside his bedroom.

 

David is being closed into the wardrobe. 

 

“Are we sure this is the best idea because-”  he’s cut off by the closet door being slammed in his face. 

 

The doorbell rings. Jonas shoves Matteo into the bed and messes up his hair. David knows it’s  _ not _  the time but he can’t help thinking how nice Matteo’s hair looks like that.

 

Carlos walks in quietly, led by Abdi. David can hear him whisper.

 

“What happened?” Jonas explains that Matteo and David broke up. It dawns on David what a terrible idea this is.

 

He also thinks it’s a bit unfair that the story they’re going with is David cheating. As if he’d ever.

 

Carlos looks outraged.

 

“That can’t be true!” He’s not a very good whisperer. “David is like, the most honest person I know! He would never!” Carlos had always been David’s favourite anyway.

 

He can hear Matteo laughing, but they all pass it off as sobs.

 

Carlos walks over to rub Matteo’s back. He looks so concerned it makes David feel guilty.

 

“Are you  _ certain _  David cheated?” he whisper-shouts to Jonas. Jonas nods at him. He looks happier than he should. David can see Carlos steel himself.

 

“Then, fuck David!” he yells. David figures now is as good a time as any. He half-jumps, half-falls out of the wardrobe.

 

“That’s not something you should say about the man marrying one of your best friends!” he beams.

 

Carlos is the most excited out of any of them. After getting over the shock of David leaping at him, he starts researching serviettes to have at the reception.

 

The first of the girls they tell is Amira. They mean to tell them all at the same time, but the second Amira walks into their apartment David knows she won’t leave without Matteo telling her. She’ll be helping them start the planning.

 

Matteo pulls her to the kitchen before she can even put her bag down.

 

“Amira, look. What cake do you think is the nicest?” Matteo is jumpy and excited, shoving different plates at Amira. She has to drop either her book bag or a plate if she doesn’t want to fall.

 

“They’re all good?” The glare she gets from Matteo tells her that she gave the wrong answer. “Why does it even matter?” she laughs through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit cake. Matteo beams at David, who’s leaning on the doorframe.

 

“Well, I mean, I think the flavour of my wedding cake should be good, right?” He holds up his hand, with the ratty paper ring put back on.

 

“You’re joking?” Her mouth falls open when Matteo grins and shakes his head. Amira actually cries, David didn’t think it was possible. But before that, she screams and she laughs and says congratulations so many times it hardly even registers as a word anymore.

 

David is so proud of himself. He fought his way to this life, where he could lean in the doorway of his own kitchen, the kitchen he burned water in, the kitchen Matteo could make him three-course meals in. He could lean in  _ his  _ doorway and watch his  _ fianceé _ , the man he was actually going to marry, the man who couldn’t tie laces until he was 15, the man who tries to play David’s guitar terribly and only listens to the music Spotify gives him. He could lean there, watching his finceé get screamed at by a crying Amira because of how happy she is. This was the life he built for himself. 

 

David is the person he’s always wanted to be and he has a life he never even let himself dream of having.

 

Before he can think too much, Amira is firing herself into his arms so hard she nearly tackles him to the floor.

 

After Amira, they tell Hanna- kind of. David doesn’t know if it really counts. He and Matteo go over to Jonas and Hanna’s apartment. While they’re waiting for Jonas to get out of the shower, they sit on the couch with her. 

 

It’s quiet, too quiet, when Matteo whispers.

 

“You heard?”

 

Hanna just smiles and nods. Matteo nods back, grinning, and then they hug.

 

David doesn’t really get what happens. He knows Matteo and Hanna have something he doesn’t fully get. He can feel it in the air. The years and years and years, all 20 of them. He feels the understanding.

 

“Matteo,  _ you deserve this _ .” is all Hanna says before they’re both crying. David doesn’t fully understand anything he just witnesses, but he doesn’t need to. When Jonas comes out, he and David share a look. The kind of look that says ‘ _ They did their telepathy thing?’  _  and ‘ _ Yeah, I don’t get it either’. _

 

The rest of the girls finding out after that is inevitable, so David takes it into his own hands. He makes a video of him yelling “Fianceé?” and Matteo running into the room. It’s stupid, but it’s perfect. They get Hanna to send it into the girls’ group chat for them, then they go home.

 

The next time they meet up altogether, they get swamped by a group of girls in their twenties raving about how they’re definitely soulmates.

 

Matteo’s mother is easy to tell. They bring her a cake with  _ We’re getting married!  _ iced on top. She cries, then she hauls herself up to the attic and drops back down with a box in her hand.

 

David leaves with Matteo’s great-great grandmother’s ring around his finger.

 

Before they tell David’s parents, the tell one other person. They have to contact her through an email address filed away in the back of one of the cabinets, shrivelling on a crumpled piece of paper. They set up a meeting in a coffee place David likes, the kind Matteo says are pretentious and have shit coffee.

 

When they arrive, hand in hand, David sees her. She’s sitting alone with an extra large coffee and a pencil in her hair. It’s his old professor, the woman who shaped his career, his art, into what it is now.

 

She doesn’t react the way some of the others did. She doesn’t scream or laugh or cry. She nods, she sniffs and then she takes David’s hand and breathes words to him.

 

_ “You deserve this.” _

 

And David really believes her.

 

It makes telling his parents easier.

 

They tell them over dinner. Laura is there to help. David asks Matteo not to come, just in case.

 

His parents are happy. David doesn’t know if he wants them to be. David invites them to the wedding. It’s stiff and quiet, but it’s better than what it would have been a year ago. 

 

Before David and Laura leave to get their bus into the city centre, David’s father stops him to invite David and Matteo camping. A trip to bond with his future son-in-law. Then his mother comes out into the front garden with a box in her hands. 

 

When David gets home, he slips his great grandfather’s ring around Matteo’s finger. Not because it represents healing or family or anything other bullshit. He keeps the ring because he likes the way it looks.

 

_ Not  _ because his mother cried when she gave it to him,  _ not  _ because her mother said to give it to her firstborn son,  _ not  _ because his parents apologised again and again and again. 

 

Once David’s parents know. David wants to tell everyone on Earth, so they do. David records a stupid video. At first, it’s just Matteo, smiling into David’s phone camera. Then he yells.

 

“Catch these hands! With your hands!” It’s smiley and messing and loving and real. David locks their fingers together. He proudly shows off the fancy ring on his finger and the plastic thing on Matteo’s. Matteo was scared to leave the house with it in case it slipped into a drain.

 

The camera pans up to Matteo’s face. 

 

“This is nice, we’re holding hands.” Matteo does his best at smirking, but it turns out too smiley.

 

The camping trip rolls around faster than David expected. It’s scary, two days alone in the woods with his father and his future husband. If they don’t get along, it would be a little bit too easy to dump their bodies.

 

Matteo, on the other hand, is ecstatic. He’s never been camping! It’s going to be fun! They’ll bond! Stop being such a baby David!

 

Matteo is also an inexperienced idiot. He has no clue what he's doing. They go to Argos for supplies and David is met face first with how stupid Matteo is.

 

“Do we need to bring our own chairs?”

 

“How much do we  _ actually  _ need sleeping bags?”

 

“Do you think we should bring, like, food?” 

 

The drive up is awkward. Matteo and David sit in the back together. Matteo does whatever David does, following his lead. This is his family, his minefield.

 

They have to hike to the camping area from the car park. If David knew that, he would have brought a wheelchair for Matteo. They haven’t been walking for fifteen minutes before Matteo is whining about his feet. 

 

David’s dad looks at David. Despite the time, David gets exactly what he’s trying to say. ‘ _ Really?’ _

 

In another life, David would’ve made the same face back and they would’ve laughed.

 

Instead, David glares. His dad doesn’t look as sorry as he wants him to.

 

David makes sure they’re as explicitly in love as they can be. They don’t censor themselves, and after a few hours David doesn’t think his dad wants them to.

 

His dad and Matteo get along better than he expected. The times they had met before, three stiff dinners, didn’t give either of them the opportunity to show what weirdos they are. Now that all their oddness is out in the open, they’re  _ bonding.  _

 

Matteo teaches him the newest meme dance. It’s disgusting.

 

When the tents are set up, David says he and Matteo should get their own tent. His father looks more confused than he should. He mutters something about body heat then David sees a lightbulb light up above his head.

 

“Is this- is this a trans thing?” David thinks his dad might be an idiot. His heart is in the right place, he doesn’t mean anything by it. Matteo swoops in before David even has to open his mouth.

 

“No, it’s a brain thing.” David can see the second Matteo’s brain catches up to his mouth written on his face. He mouths a sorry over to David and at least has the decency to look a tiny bit sheepish. David doesn’t want him to.

 

David’s dad cops on. He doesn’t ask why they want to sleep in the same tent, without any parents who are pushing 60.

 

David leaves, he has to get away from his father and Matteo’s thumb war tournament. He collects flowers, then gets some dry wood too so he doesn’t get hate crimed by a squirrel.

 

Before he sets the sticks down by the fire pit, he sees Matteo and his father through the trees. When he stands still enough, he can hear them.

 

“You take care of my kid, you hear? Don’t ever hurt him.”

 

“I don’t really think it's your place to say that Mr. Schreibner. If anything, I’d consider it the other way around.”

 

David loves him.

 

They roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories and do all the things they used to when David was 10. It makes him want to cry. He missed eight years of camping trips

 

David’s dad asks if Matteo is going to introduce him to his own father. The soft, weirdo Matteo David knows and loves turns into steel. Ice cold. His face blanks and David sees his shoulders tense up. The only response is a shake of his head. Everyone understands. Matteo’s eyes stay dark for another twenty minutes afterwards.

 

While they’re crawling into the tent, David hears Matteo mutter something.

 

“God, you’re so out of my league.”

 

David is about to object, but he doesn’t get the chance. Matteo is already snoring.

 

Matteo can sleep anywhere. While David is trying to get comfortable in his sleeping bag, Matteo is conked out on top of his. David makes the sacrifice of opening his up fully to use as a blanket for both of them. The half-coherent cuddle he gets in return is more than enough.

 

Matteo turns to get David into his arms. David is in love, fully and entirely doused in it. And he has been for six years straight. Sometimes, he gets used to it. Then moments like this happen and he stops to look around. This is his life.

 

This is the man he’ll marry. He will be  _ married  _ to him. David wants to spend the rest of his life with Matteo, locked up in this tent. That’s not quite possible. He guesses he’ll be able to manage the rest of the planet as long as Matteo is beside him.

 

When David was younger he used to tell people he was a changeling. He fit all the symptoms. He was bad with people, he had nice eyes, he had nightmares so bad he wouldn’t let himself sleep, he didn’t fit inside the body he had, the wrong body.

 

He looked for explanations everywhere. He wanted to know why he felt the way he did.

 

He used to cut his own hair. Whenever it grew past his ears the scissors came out. He wore his dad’s clothes to bed, then to school, then whenever they left the house.

 

It’s a shock no one realised before he did.

 

When he wakes up, he forgets where he is. He doesn’t think, he squeezes his eyes shut tight and curls into Matteo’s side. 

 

Eventually, his eyes crack open. Matteo is there, blondie and golden and ethereal.

 

He used to think that this whole thing might just be a dream, but he could never dream this up. He was creative, but he wasn’t on LSD.

 

Then something scratches the outside of the tent and Matteo is scared so hard his eyes bolt open and he accidentally slaps David.

 

Once everything is packed up and the car is on the road, Matteo is asleep within half an hour. David’s dad turns the radio up a little and David lies back in his chair. This is the life he’s always wanted.

 

He remembers growing up, so sure that his parents would always love him. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but he wasn’t 100% right either. He remembers the piggyback rides, the bedtime stories, the cooking lessons. Most of all, he remembers how it felt to leave it. He remembers being called the wrong name every day. He remembers being put into clothes he hated, pretending to be something he never could be.

 

“So, Matteo sure is something, huh?” 

 

Something beastly and feral rears its head between David’s ribs. It’s brutal and black and savage and David has to try his best to beat it back down. His father seems to notice.

 

“In a good way of course!” he adds, and the brutal thing lies dormant again.

 

“He is.” David remembers the beginning of it all, the shaky breaths and sinking hearts and hidden smiles. He remembers the moment he realised he was in too deep. 

 

_ Careful now, Schreibner. You’re lookin’ at him like he’s the sun. _

 

David doesn’t have to be careful anymore

 

When David was younger, his dad had said he’d kill the man David would marry. It was obviously a joke, rooted in questionable beliefs, but David had liked it. The thought that someone cared so much about him they’d kill to keep him around.

 

After he left, he gave up on those thoughts. The fantasies of David’s father and his fiancé bonding, of a protective father, they all died before David allowed them to reach the front of his brain.

 

But now, now that his family is back in his life, David is letting the wounds heal. He lets himself want.

 

“He’s good to you?”

 

“So good.”  _ Better than you  _ David wants to say. Then he remembers the origami lessons and the art museum visits and the parent-teacher meetings. His dad fucked up, really fucked up, but he’s trying to make it right again. “So good.” David repeats it. He thinks his dad understands.

 

“Are you going to take his last name?” It’s not a question David had expected. There’s so much to think about, with the wedding and everything, he hasn’t even considered.

 

He doesn’t need to think too hard though. He sees his father’s fingers tense around the wheel, the way he’s staring straight at the empty road.

 

“No, no I don’t think I will.” 

 

David knows he deserved better, but he wants this. This is his family. Not even they can take that away from him.

 

David can't tell the difference between Matteo and certain parts of nature. In a nightingale's sugary song, he hears Matteo humming the Kahoot tune. Sweet-voiced messengers of Spring.  In the flowers, he sees Matteo, yellow and golden and happy and gorgeous. When he feels a breeze, puts his feet in a stream, watches a bee buzz past. It's all Matteo.

 

He sits in the quiet corners of the park for hours on end, letting the bugs creep onto his legs, letting himself sink into the space around him. Matteo can't sit still long enough for the earth to take shape around him.

 

That's okay for Matteo, because the world really does revolve around him. David can't blame it. if he was the earth he'd do the same. If he was the sun he'd do the same. The day the sun dies, will be one day after Matteo dies.

 

Everything Matteo does, David sees art in.

 

There's only one solution.

 

David makes his return to film. It’s different. He can’t make one film that’s not at least a little bit about Matteo.

 

He worms his way into every piece of art David makes. No matter what it is, you can find traces of Matteo in there. David can’t help it. His work means nothing if it’s not honest, and honestly? David can’t not think of him. He can’t write one film that’s not about Matteo.

 

Needless to say, his films are happy ones. He makes feel good movies that he knows aren’t 100% realistic. But fuck it. What’s the point in making the sad, gruesome films he used to? They helped at the time, to get it all out. But now? He’s  _ happy.  _ He’s happier than he’s ever been. His work shows it.

 

He lets everyone have a happy ending. He lets the villains get redemption arcs, he lets the main characters wear yellow and lets the plants in the frame grow. 

 

In his real life, he buys every yellow jumper he sees and brings cactus after cactus home to his apartment.

 

He makes documentaries too. After meeting  _ the  _ Louis Theroux at one of his premiers he can’t help it. Anything he’s interested in, he digs. They’re only 40 minutes long, but they’re  _ fun.   _

 

Researching whales for a month then meeting whale scientists to go see them in the ocean? David likes his job. 

 

He makes comedies, inspired by living with Matteo. They’re all more romantic than they should be. No one complains. All the characters get to have scenes where they just dance.

 

He animates too. He hadn’t realised how much he missed drawing. Animation quickly becomes one of David’s favourite things to do. It lets him make anything he wants. There’s nothing stopping him from making an entire film where the main cast is made up of bathroom supplies.

 

He gets invited to go on a talk show. He wants to say no, it would make things easier, but one look at his friends’ faces and that’s out of the picture. Jonas says he’ll break David and Matteo up if he doesn’t go and tell the world about his new films.

 

So, he goes. Realistically there’s no other option. Laura means what she says.

 

The host is lovely, very kind, but David is terrified. He’s going to be on  _ television. _  They’re going to be interviewing  _ him,  _ David.

 

Interviews aren’t the same as Q&A’s or panels. David has no control here. The entire room is going to be looking at him, listening to him. Not his characters or his art or a prerecorded video. Just David.

 

This isn’t David. David is quiet and polite and reserved. The audience will boo him. They’ll cut the whole thing in editing, he knows it. He’s in his dressing room, twenty minutes before he’s meant to go on, and he’s about to cry.

 

Just when he’s decided to run away, back to the apartment, someone knocks.

 

“Mr. Schreibner?” It’s Matteo’s voice. David cracks the door open just enough for him to slip in, then he locks it again.

 

He sits on the floor with his legs crossed and puts his face in his hands.

 

“I can’t do this.” His voice comes out muffled and sad.

 

“Oh fuck off.” The reply isn’t what David was expecting. “You’re the smartest, coolest, funniest, most creative person I know David.”

 

“But I'm not, I’m not any of that. I’m just David. I leave the car unlocked and I open doors with wet hands and I don’t close presses behind me. I cannot do this Matteo. I’m not the man you think I am.”

 

“You are ten times the man I think you are. Just talk to me, I’ll be right there.”

 

David manages to make it to the stage.

 

The interviewer is kind. They start with easy questions. The audience laughs at all the right moments. David stares at Matteo to keep from hyperventilating.

 

“Your films have gotten happier? Is there any reason why?” the question snaps David back to reality. It takes him a second to realise he actually has an answer.

 

“Yeah, actually. I used to think my films were honest, like they showed the world how it really is. But the world is way-way better than I thought it was” The audience awe and David can’t help but smile.

 

“According to your Twitter profile, there’s something specifically making your world better. Let us see that ring, David!” 

 

David grins as he holds up his ring finger to the camera.

 

“Yeah, his name is Matteo and he’s everything to me.” Everyone in the room swoons. Then, once it settles down, a single yell comes from the crowd. David recognises it immediately.

 

“Gay!”

 

Security is on their feet in seconds. What they think they can actually do, David doesn't know. The host looks outraged. David can barely breathe from laughter.

 

“No, no, don’t worry that was him! That’s my fiancé.”

 

The YouTube clip trends.

 

David feels like an anomaly. Success doesn’t make him happy anymore.

There are all these people, these kids, looking up to him. David has to make art, he has to make art every single time. People say his films saved their lives, as if that will help him. If he makes a bad film does that mean it’ll ruin people lives?

David thinks he might be a bad person. It’s something inside him, severed from the rest, telling him why.  He has this whole life, this insane life. He’s living his wildest dream. He’s the person his ten-year-old self fantasised about being.

He doesn’t think he deserves it. He has all these fans, and all this money, sometimes he can’t breathe with it. It’s on a loop inside his skull. He’s not worthy. He’s living his dream while families starve. While he worries about colour pallets, children cross seas for safety.

It drives him insane, the guilt. It crushes him. 

To some people, it’s all about the money. Investors and budgets and stocks and box offices.

All David wants is to be a good person.

He can’t sleep through alarms, he hasn’t in five years. Not when he gets this life while other trans kids get buried. He gets up and he works.

He’s working on that. Sometimes he’ll stay in bed for a couple of minutes and just stare at Matteo.

David likes to look at Matteo’s face. He knows it well enough he can draw it from memory. Every crack, every crevice. It spells out the life he lived before they met. His eyes, when they’re open and looking into David’s, he swears that there are stars looking back at him.

How can he explain this, the need to keep Matteo’s in his mind forever, without looking weird? David doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.

He tells Matteo every day. His face is the nicest thing to look at on the planet. He could lie in their bed for weeks on end just looking at Matteo’s cheekbones if there weren't any alarms.

 

They plan the wedding, or at least decide on the date.

David likes Winter. Cool and crisp. Things dying off, leaving space to make new lives. He likes the taste of snowflakes and the shape of snow angels and the feeling of hot chocolate on his tongue. 

He used to love the Hanukkah gifts, before all they had was the absence of them.

Matteo likes Spring. Dulcet and sugary. Things blooming all around him. It smells like a new start. It feels like sunlight waking him up, his feet hitting the floor the first time he asks them to, Hans’ hugs during Easter.

Easter was his favourite holiday when he was a kid. Matteo still likes it now, but for different reasons.

They compromise on Autumn. An October wedding, two days before Halloween. They can eat the cake with vampire teeth.

The rest is easy. They just get Kiki to do. She makes vision boards of David’s mood boards.

Everything is great, until it’s not.

David comes back to a quiet apartment. The lights are off.

He walks through and feels ghosts’ fingers crawling up his spine. The bedroom door is cracked open. There’s a body cocooned in the duvet.

“Matteo?” David’s voice feels too loud in the quiet. There’s no reply. David takes off his scarf, then his shoes, and he lies down behind Matteo.

The better half of an hour later, sounds leave Matteo’s mouth.

“I’m sorry.” It’s quiet and ashamed and everything else David never wants Matteo to feel.

“No, stop, don’t be-” the words fall out of his mouth. He wants to carve all of the sadness out of Matteo and push it down deep inside his own chest.

“No, David, I  _ am. _ This isn’t fair to you. We’re e _ ngaged _ . I should be happy. Why can’t I just be happy? David why can’t I just-” and then Matteo’s face is buried in David’s winter coat and he’s crying. And David is crying too.

They stay like that, quiet and fragile, in their bed until Matteo is asking gently for a glass of water. David puts one in his hand as fast as he can manage. Matteo takes small sips. He’s too breakable.

“I thought it was gone for good. I thought I was finally fixed.” Matteo croaks. He holds up the empty bottle of pills. He hadn’t refilled his prescription when he was meant to, three days ago.

“Matteo, you are not broken.” David is too breakable as well. Together, they’re the tower of Pisa. They’re on the way down.

David wants to stabilize. Their not the tower of Pisa, they have foundations. They’re not falling, they’re just being wobbled by the wind. And even if they did collapse, David would build them back up brick by brick until he dies. 

Matteo ignores his words. 

“All I want to do is sleep. That’s all I ever want to do.” He curls into a ball.

“We’ll sort through it  Matteo, I promise.” David curls up with him. The next morning, he sleeps through his alarm.

Matteo leaves David sticky notes in his lunch box. David leaves sticky notes on the bedroom door and the bathroom door and the pillow.

They refill the prescription. Matteo is back on his feet the next week.

They talk about Matteo’s mother. When he was younger, she wouldn’t eat food made by anyone but Matteo. She swore there was someone trying to poison her, but Matteo wouldn’t let that happen. Matteo went away once, for less than a week. He can’t even remember what it was for. Something about school, or Jonas, or something else stupid like that. When he came home, his mother hadn’t eaten anything.

When Matteo moved out, he bought her a freezer with her disability benefits and filled it to the brim with meals he made.

“I killed her David, when I left I killed her. She’s not who she used to be”

And David wants to say so many things.  _ It was you or her, it’s not your fault, she’s still there. _

Instead, he holds Matteo so tight he might squeeze all of his past out of him.

By the time the wedding rolls around, Matteo is himself again.

When David was younger, he pictured his wedding different. He though his hands would be shaking, all of him would be shaking, thinking he can’t do this, he can’t. He can’t live the rest of his life in one spot with one person and one story for the rest of time.

Instead, it’s calm. David knows this is what he wants. When he wakes up in the morning the first person he thinks about is Matteo. When he goes to sleep it’s Matteo’s back he’s wrapped around. He wants this. It won’t be one spot, one life, one story. It’ll be them, Matteo and David, doing whatever they want. 

They could move to the middle of the Amazon, they could adopt Koalas, they could live in Atlantis. It won’t be one story. It’ll be hundreds of thousands of little ones.

He can hear All Star playing while Matteo walks down the aisle with his mother.

Laura stands beside him, nervous and shaky and excited. David holds her hand as she walks him down the aisle.

Everyone important to him is in this room. 

He walks down the aisle with “Party Rock Anthem” playing. He couldn’t say no when Matteo asked. It’s worth it for the way Matteo’s eyes scrunch up. 

They have their first dance to Hozier. Instead of the sad songs of the past, they dance together to Jackie and Wilson.

When it’s time for cake, Matteo takes the two sets of vampire teeth out of his pocket. All their friends groan.

Jonas’s best man speech is amazing.

“When I met Luigi, sorry Matteo. No that sounds wrong. When I met Luigi, we did a bunch of things I can’t remember. Why? Because I was four.”

It keeps going, funny and heartfelt and honest. Jonas doesn’t stop when the crowd is crying. He doesn’t even stop when he’s crying. 

Laura’s speech is just as good, and she projects a video of David and her when she was ten and David was six. It’s muted, but David is in a Johnny Test t-shirt and cargo shorts, with his choppy hair up around his temples. 

Laura’s dress is pink and frilly and has wings.

  
David does  _ not  _ start crying halfway through the speech. And if Matteo says he does then Matteo is lying.

 

When the speeches are done, Matteo stands up. He’s awkward and stiff, but it's enough to get everyone’s attention.

“I have- I have something to show.” He looks at Laura and she gives him a thumbs up. Something appears on the projector Laura had used to show her video. She hits play.

 

It starts.

There’s no sound. The screen shows David’s face, filmed by Matteo’s phone. The frame is shaky and moves from a close up of David’s cheek, to his eyebrow, to his nose, then his lips then his eyes.

David has to take the phone to fix the zoom. As it zooms back out rapidly, the screen shows more and more of Matteo lying on top of the couch, reaching to grab back his phone. It jostles around, then there’s David, lying on the floor with tracksuit pants and a hoodie on, grinning up at Matteo.

Matteo’s voice starts.  _ This is David.  _ The David onscreen is sneezing. Then he’s trying to pick a ripe avocado in Aldi. Then he’s running off the footpath to pick a daisy for Matteo, coming back with three and looking shy.

“Why are you filming me?” David is sitting at the counter, sketching in his notebook. 

“I love you so much.” Matteo’s voice is the dictionary definition of lovestruck.

_ Every time David says ‘I love you’ every cell in my body shuts down for a second to process. _

“That wasn’t my question asshole.” David fake-glares. Matteo zooms in on him, then on the middle finger he has raised in the air.

_ Whe _ n _ I imagine the rest of my life, David is there in every second. I can’t think of a future without him in it. _

A timelapse of Matteo replacing all the faces in the pictures around their apartment with Dr. Doofenschmirtz face starts.

His voice-over comes back. He doesn’t acknowledge the Doof-ing. 

_ David is an ailurophile. He loves cats. This is Puisín, a kitten he found in a box on his way home. _

“David, we can’t keep it!” The frame is full up, David on the floor with a kitten crawling its way across his stomach. David makes his best puppy-dog-eyes up at Matteo.

“Why not,” he pouts. Matteo’s frustrated sigh is audible behind the lens.

“It’s not responsible.” The more they talk, the less sure he sounds.

“We have the rest of our lives to be responsible,” David grins, dirty and devilish and sweeter than it has any right to be.

The video cuts to the cat, now fully grown, sitting on the counter and slowly pushing a banana off the counter while maintaining eye contact with Matteo.

_ David had surgery a while back. _

The video clip of David, loopy after the operation, starts to play. He’s counting his fingers and somehow keeps getting 12.

“I’ll love you as long as the moon shines,” Matteo sighs sugary. David looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“The moon doesn’t shine dipshit.”

_ It made him himself, or a happier version of himself. _

The video Jonas took, the one of David and Matteo’s dance performance at the beach, plays.

_ I love David. I love him so much it’s unbelievable. I don’t know what I did. _

The voice-over continues, quieter, as if Matteo moved away from the microphone.

_ Well, I do actually. I blazed it all the time.  _ He laughs harder than he should at his own joke.

“You make me feel so much. It’s terrifying.” David whispers. The camera falls to Matteo’s side.

“I know the feeling.”

The clip changes to Matteo, giddy and sweet, lying on David’s chest.

“We’re engaged.” He says it just to feel the words leave his lips.

“We are.” David beams at him.

_ Matteo sounds a bit like Romeo so I guess you could say I’m a romantic. _

The video shows David, looking at a picture of them taken years ago, somewhere in Belgium. He can’t breathe he’s laughing so hard.

“Why the fuck is Doof in there?”

The video cuts again. Matteo is carding his fingers through David’s hair.

_ David used to let anyone walk all over him just so they wouldn’t walk away. _

“Your art is happier now.” Matteo doesn’t ask why. David says why anyways.

“I got tired of hating myself.”

_ David is an artist. I think that if David, Van Gogh and Picasso all got into a fight, David would break their legs with a paintbrush or something. _

The video shows David on their bed, sketching intensely, then a behind the scenes video of him directing in his fancy chair, then him playing the piano.

_ People ask him about the film premiers and directing but David says the most exciting parts of his life are the small moments. _

In the video, David’s head is in Matteo’s lap while they watch Queer Eye. In a clip where they have Snapchat filters on, Matteo sticks his tongue in David’s ear.

There’s a shaky clip showing David laughing on his bike. It changes before anyone falls.

David is leaning back on some grass, holding a book above his face. He kicks at Matteo out of frame.

“Listen, it’s Fitzgerald. ‘Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy’. Deep, right?”

_  Show me an artist and I’ll write you a love story _ .

The video cuts to Matteo, sitting in the bathroom, alone. The camera is set up in front of him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bath and fiddling with his hands.

“I don’t really know what to say now. I love you, David. I could write encyclopedias about the way you make me think and feel and move and speak and laugh and learn and want and need and love and love and love and love. You are everything to me.”

The video cuts to David, with Matteo’s head in his lap, pulling at his skin. Matteo keeps trying to swat his hands away but David can dodge easily.

“I love you,” grins Matteo up at him.

“That’s so gay,” David grins back.

The screen goes black and Matteo’s voice speaks the final line.

_ You are my beginning, my end and everything in between. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well thats that
> 
> comment please please please
> 
> im going to the gaeltacht tommorow. im extremely scared. wwe can only have our phones an hour a day so iknew i had to get this out now.  
> love ye
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr it's aoifeanamadan.tumblr.com
> 
> comment please
> 
> im so tired its 3 am and i did the doof thing in my own home three days ago no one has noticed yet


End file.
